Twitter rolls out auto captions for voice tweets after accessibility backlash

Twitter on Thursday turned on automated captions for voice tweets on iOS following criticism that the feature, which debuted last year, wasn't accessible to people with disabilities. 

"We took your feedback and we're doing the work. To improve accessibility features, captions for voice Tweets are rolling out today," Twitter said in a tweet. "Now when you record a voice Tweet, captions will automatically generate and appear. To view the captions on web, click the 'CC' button."

Twitter began testing voice tweets last summer, but many criticized the social media platform for not taking all users' needs into consideration before the release.

"We're sorry about testing voice Tweets without support for people who are visually impaired, deaf, or hard of hearing," the company tweeted in June. "It was a miss to introduce this experiment without this support. Accessibility should not be an afterthought." In September, the company said it was "working to have transcription available to make voice Tweets more accessible." 

Twitter's head of global accessibility Gurpreet Kaur said in a statement, "Though it's still early and we know it won't be perfect at first, it's one of many steps we're taking to expand and strengthen accessibility across our service, and we look forward to continuing our journey to create a truly inclusive service."

Voice tweets aren't yet available on Android.