Twitter Announces new boost for accessibility options

Twitter has announced new accessibility options to allow more people to be able to access the platform making the platform more integrated. 

In a blog post, Twitter said, "Testing voice Tweets earlier this summer made us realize how much work we still need to do as a company, and we made a commitment to make Twitter more inclusive for the disabled community – creating a dedicated team to focus on greater accessibility, tooling, and advocacy across all of our products."

Twitter had announced voice tweets in June 2020 however, they haven't found widespread use as of yet. Although it has been a significant addition for those who can't use a keyboard or traditional ways of engaging with the platform allowing them to participate in the wider discussion. 

In order to advance its accessibility features, Twitter is putting together two new initiatives to work on areas like : an 'Accessibility Center of Excellence' and an 'Experience Accessibility Team'.

According to the blog post :- 

"The Accessibility Center for Excellence will set goals, drive progress, consult and partner with groups across our core business functions to help make aspects of Twitter more accessible. This includes everything from accessibility in our office spaces to our marketing and communications strategies, to legal and policy standards, and more. 

The Experience Accessibility Team will work within our product org on new and existing features and products, providing resources and tools that promote greater accessibility on the service. They’ll work in tandem with the Accessibility Center for Excellence to ensure we’re held accountable in identifying and filling accessibility gaps throughout the product development lifecycle."

The two initiatives will ensure that there's always an accessibility for product and strategic approaches, which will allow Twitter to keep these elements in mind, and lead to the development of new product features and options allowing broader usage. 

They said, "Beyond staffing our teams, we’re already working to add automated captions to audio and video by early 2021. This lays the foundation for a longer-term roadmap that invests broadly in media accessibility throughout our service."

Twitter says that it will be gathering feedback from people with disabilities over the coming months as it looks to form a new way for key projects as a part of this new push. Better late than never!