YouTube pulled its community captions feature, so now more creators are making their own
Jack Edwards doesn’t want to be praised for doing what he considers the bare minimum: making his videos accessible to his deaf and hard of hearing viewers.
Edwards began making book and lifestyle videos on YouTube five years ago, but he only started captioning all of his videos in January. “It was one of my goals this year to invest more time into making my channel more accessible for viewers,” he says. “I always think about the quote, ‘It’s a privilege to learn, rather than to experience,’ and that’s true for so many accessibility issues. I don’t rely on subtitles to enjoy YouTube content, so it’s easy to forget that others do.”
More creators like Edwards have been writing captions for their videos over the past year, providing subtitles so that more viewers can engage with their content without having to hear or understand the audio.
It’s a result deaf campaigners considered almost impossible about a year ago, when YouTube nixed community caption contributions. Most YouTube channels don’t upload captions for their videos, so it fell on subscribers to volunteer high-quality subtitles for fellow viewers to read. Yet, in September, YouTube scrapped the feature allowing for viewer-submitted captions, citing “low usage” and “abuse.” Creators had to start making captions themselves.
