One of the foremost and most widely used online video sharing websites, YouTube has announced its intention of introducing auto captions to all the English language videos available on the website. Before today’s announcement, only videos from selected YouTube partners were provided with auto captions that were projected using Google’s automated speech-recognition software. This latest move on part of YouTube will now enable the video sharing service to reach out to the users who have hearing disabilities, as they wold now be able to follow the videos with the help of the auto captions.

Google has stated that, by the year 2015, there will be more than 700 million users with hearing disabilities and due to the fact that, more and more online content is now being reverted to video formats, the logical move is to provide the users with the auto captions option, thus empowering them with the right of kind of information, that they seek. As of now, the auto captions are only available in English, but the search giant is working hard to provide these caption in over 50 languages, using its much appreciated translation technology. However, as there can be room for errors in the translation process, Google has decided to enable the users to download the auto captions, correct the errors and then upload them.

According to Google,

“Auto-captions should be available to everyone who’s
interested in using them. We’re also working to provide auto-captions
for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If
you’re having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our
Help Center.”

Via Yahoo! News