Twitter Launches Audio Translations for Charts for Visually Impaired Users

Twitter continues to expand its accessibility tools, this time via the addition of a new option to translate charts into audio elements for visually impaired users.

As you can see (and hear) in this example, the new process will enable visually impaired people to ‘listen’ to charts by translating the data into pitched sounds, in accompaniment to a written description of the chart.

Which, in most cases, you would assume, will end up sounding much like this example, though it’d be interesting to hear the slight variations in chart figures, and how that can help people listening in to delineate key elements within the chart display.

Twitter’s been working to add in more accessibility options over the past year, including upgrades to its alt-text description display, auto captions on video clips and a new ‘CC’ button on videos where captions are available.

Twitter’s also added a dedicated ‘+ALT’ button on posted images back in 2020, making it easier for users to add alt text descriptions to their shared visuals.

In combination, Twitter now provides a range of helpful elements to enhance the in-app experience, offering more ways for more users to take part in the Twitter conversation.

Chart translations are another small step, which can have big impacts for a broad subset of the community.