Liam O’Dell: Social media’s move towards audio and what this means for deaf people

Social media platforms are pretty obsessed with audio at the moment.

For years we’ve had voice memos and audio-visual content (with or without captions), but now things are moving over to the power of voice – something which, of course, isn’t immediately accessible to deaf people.

It began with Twitter rolling out Voice Tweets, and continued with the platform’s introduction of Spaces – a chatroom-like feature where people can turn on their microphones and chat with other users. A rival app, known as Clubhouse, offers a similar service.

So, how deaf-friendly are these services?

Let’s start with Twitter Spaces. With both this and Clubhouse, you have to be invited to get access, and the kind folks at Twitter turned on the feature for my account earlier this month, enabling me to test out its automatic captions tool, and see how usable it was to my deaf and disabled followers.

At first glance, Twitter seems to have the same teething problems experienced by any new voice recognition software. Several listeners in my Space pointed out instances where the captions interpreted my words as those which are far more inappropriate. For one user, ‘Space’ had been misinterpreted as ‘spice’.

🧵 THREAD: Managed to jump on someone’s @TwitterSpaces and see what it’s all about, and most importantly, test out the automatic speech recognition/live transcription feature.

Audio is deliberately muted in the below clip. Fellow deafies, can you understand this? pic.twitter.com/msLnDmswf0

— Liam O'Dell (@LiamODellUK) December 20, 2020

Naturally, there are some balances to be struck when it comes to this software.

First and foremost, accuracy needs to be considered alongside speed. Listeners pointed out that the captions were quick to display, but at the expense of context, full sentences and precision. Transcriptions were/split up/like this, making it difficult, no doubt, for neurodivergent folk to process, on top of deaf and hard of hearing individuals like me.

Another technical point worth mentioning is just how refreshing it was to see a button from the very start asking whether I wanted to share transcripts with my audience. Putting such an ask front and centre will no doubt increase awareness of accessibility on the platform, in a way similar to what we’ve been seeing with alt text/image descriptions on Instagram and Twitter at present.

For what it’s worth, the feature is incredibly promising. I can certainly see it being used by artists to give secret listening parties for their new single or album, or by those considering exploring another approach to podcasting.

There are, indeed, pros and cons with its current iteration, and it’s no doubt going to get better and better as the team at Twitter continue to work on it. As I said in a tweet after my first trial run, it’s refreshing to see a social media platform collaborate with deaf and hard of hearing people on new features as early as possible. By doing this, accessibility is more likely to be available at full launch, rather than an afterthought.

What a shame, then, that Clubhouse is still inaccessible to deaf people.

I should add that, unlike Twitter Spaces, @joinClubhouse's incredibly inaccessible experience made me reluctant to even start a room. That's what happens when you don't make your product inclusive from the start: disabled people will not engage with it. https://t.co/ZWC6ux6r9L

— Liam O'Dell (@LiamODellUK) January 27, 2021

The most immediate criticism upon opening the app – which I am not the first to recognise – is the appalling lack of captions. It’s even more ironic when, as part of the set-up process, one has the option to select ‘disability’ as an area of interest.

Even though Clubhouse only has two full-time staff at present (Rohan Seth and Paul Davison), thus limiting their workflow, that doesn’t excuse them from the requirement to make their product available to deaf users.

In a blog post from July 2020, Clubhouse’s co-creators write that “tools to encourage inclusion” is something “top-of-mind” for them ahead of a wider release of the app. “What are the subtle gender, race and other dynamics that can create imbalance on the platform,” they ask, “what tools could we make to highlight when these issues are happening, or to help ensure that more people have a voice?”

Six months on, they still haven’t found one simple answer to these questions. While they continue to search for one, I’ll be spending my time on Spaces for the foreseeable future.

Photo: Ollie Cole.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.