YouTube has announced new updates to captions and audio features on the platform.
The platform is testing the ability to add multiple audio tracks on videos with a small group of creators. This is meant to provide multi-language audio for international audiences as well as descriptive audio for people who are blind or low-vision.
“We hope to roll this feature out more widely in the coming quarters,” it said.
Features for video captions
It has also expanded its live auto captions feature to all creators.
“Creators can now enable live auto captions for any live stream in English to make streams more inclusive and accessible,” it said in a post.
Previously this feature was only available to channels with over 1,000 subscribers. It is also planning to expand live auto captions to all 13 supported automatic captioning languages in the coming months.
Separately, it will be rolling out auto translation for captions in supported languages on Android & iOS later this year. Currently this is only available on Desktop.
It will also be experimenting with search caption transcripts feature on mobile. “Later this year, we’ll experiment with the option to type in the search bar at the top of the transcript to find specific keywords,” it said.
Also see: ‘YouTube is very focussed on creators’
The Google-owned video platform had previously announced the “Subtitle Editor” feature.
“We’re actively working on this and will keep you updated in the coming months. This will be a new Channel Permission in YouTube Studio that allows creators to delegate caption and subtitle creation on their channel to those they trust,” it said.
“We know that it’s taking longer than expected, thanks for being patient with us,” it added.
These new features are meant to help improve accessibility and help creators reach a wider audience.