Facebook For The Impaired: Closed Caption Support On Live Videos For Deaf, Hard Of Hearing Users

Facebook soon will be making a central part of its videos easier to use for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. The social network announced publishers of Facebook Live videos now can add closed captioning support to their broadcasts.

While Facebook already offers automatic captions on prerecorded and uploaded videos, the support for captions on live video broadcasts has some technical differences. Publishers can choose to add CEA-608 standard closed captions or work with third-party caption support companies for their live broadcasts.

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As TechCrunch noted the technical overhead needed to generate captions on live videos without lag could be difficult for Facebook to manage effectively by itself. But by adding support for live captions alongside publishers, Facebook can offer the feature to all users. Facebook noted it previously tested the feature at major broadcast events like its F8 developers conference.

In a post announcing the update, Facebook said the desire to make its network accessible to more users played a major role.

“By enabling publishers to include closed captions with their Live broadcasts, we hope more people can now participate in the exciting moments that unfold on Live,” Facebook said. “Today’s milestone represents the next step in our efforts to make content on Facebook accessible to more people.”

While the update is a relatively minor one, it speaks to the increased importance video has for Facebook. The social media network said video watch times have increased by more than four times, and approximately one in five videos on Facebook is a live broadcast.

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Within the past year, Facebook has invested heavily in video programming. Part of these updates have been small technical tweaks designed to make video a more central part of the Facebook News Feed: Facebook has adjusted areas such as how videos autoplay and the number of ads that show up during a clip. Other areas will be easier to see, and Facebook reportedly has planned to launch original shows and content.

Both moves echo similar pivots into video from numerous competitors. Companies like Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat have invested significantly or are reportedly developing their own original shows alongside media partners users can watch. For hard-of-hearing users, other companies have offered varying levels of closed captioning and live caption support for their videos.

For Facebook, part of the shift comes down to its bottom line. Videos are another way for the company to increase ad revenue by opening up Facebook Live to deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. With the caption update, Facebook can get more users to watch and interact with live videos.