Posted by Noreen McInnis on Twitch
Twitch users who are deaf or hard of hearing can now start following the conversation on stream with live closed captions on Twitch produced content.
Starting today we will use our new closed captions system to offer captions on ‘Twitch Weekly’, our show about all things Twitch, that airs every Friday at 1 PM Pacific time on twitch.tv/twitch. We will also provide captions on all of the Kappa Theater panels and events at TwitchCon 2016 streaming on twitch.tv/twitch, including the Twitch Keynote, TwitchCon Talent Show, and the final judging of the Twitch Creative Cosplay Contest.
Live closed captions on Twitch are typed live (very quickly!) by professional stenographers hired to caption Twitch produced content. Every part of the stream will be captioned right when it happens, so you won’t miss out on any unscripted moments.
As a user, you can adjust caption size, color, placement, and other settings in the video player options menu to tailor visibility to your preference for each stream. Your settings will be saved and used to display captions any time they’re available on a stream or if you re-watch a past broadcast from a stream that was previously captioned.
As a broadcaster, if you want to offer captions to your audience, you will need to transmit caption files in an accepted format embedded in your stream or alongside your stream through your broadcast encoder. To learn more, visit the Twitch Help Center.
We owe a special thanks to the team at AbleGamers who, as part of their dedication to bringing greater accessibility to the video game space, ran a live test of our caption system with their Twitch community in August. They provided valuable feedback that is helping us take this step toward making Twitch accessible to more gamers.
Now, whether you are deaf, hard of hearing, or just want to squeeze a little Twitch into your library study session, you won’t miss out on Twitch produced content when listening to audio isn’t an option.
