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Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and TikTok is marking the occasion by rolling out some updates to its inclusive access features, including alt-text for photos, enhanced text presentation options, and variable color contrast.
As per TikTok:
“We know that when people feel seen, heard, and supported, they're empowered to share their stories, create and connect with others in meaningful ways. That's why we're focused on continuously building products that serve everyone. We see accessibility not just as a responsibility, but as an opportunity to innovate and foster a more inclusive platform for our global community.”
First off, TikTok is expanding its alt-text options to photo posts, which will enable creators to add alt text during upload or after publishing.
As you can see in this example sequence, users will now be able to add text descriptions to their image posts, improving accessibility.
The feature was first spotted in testing last month, but it hasn’t been officially confirmed till now.
For videos, TikTok also provides auto-generated captions for video clips, along with text-to-speech.
So TikTok will now have its core visual elements covered with alternative descriptions, which will provide greater accessibility for people who are blind or have low vision, expanding TikTok’s audience reach.
TikTok’s also added an option to increase the color contrast with the color contrast switch.
“This feature increases the foreground color of text, icons, and user interface elements, making the platform more usable for individuals with low vision or sensitivity to low contrast.”
Finally, TikTok will now also respects a user's device’s bold text setting, and will automatically display all in-app text in bold when enabled.
These are the latest in TikTok’s expanding range of accessibility options, with also include text-size controls, dark mode options, photosensitivity controls, and more.
This is an important area of focus, for all apps, and TikTok continues to expand and evolve its accessibility tools to improve connection with all users.
You can check out all of TikTok’s accessibility features here.
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