Pocket Casts App Adds Support for Generated Transcripts in Latest Update
Popular cross-platform podcast client Pocket Casts announced this week the app now supports transcripts with the 7.85 update. The company notes the feature is available on iOS and Android for Plus and Patron members, with Pocket Casts touting the “powerful” update that “makes engaging with your favorite podcasts easier than ever.”
Pocket Casts stresses it still supports transcripts supplied by individual podcasters, but says the generated ones are intended to “[expand] access by automatically generating them for new episodes from the most-followed podcasts.” The generated transcripts are searchable too, with Pocket Casts instructing users in its announcement to access the transcript by tapping the Message icon located in the Now Playing screen’s toolbar.
I don’t use Pocket Casts on iOS, but this is a notable development nonetheless. While it’s great to hear Pocket Casts will maintain support for manually supplied transcripts, generated versions cater to an obvious issue: not every podcast—perhaps the majority of the most popular shows—supports transcripts at all. In an accessibility context, this can make popular news shows like The New York Times’ The Daily inaccessible to many—especially obviously to those who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing. Podcasts, like music, is a medium steeped in the presumption everyone can hear (or hear well). Thus, podcasts are logically inherently exclusionary—which makes sense on one hand, but with the rise of technology’s presence and power, can help turn the status quo on its head. To wit, that Pocket Casts is now automatically generating transcripts makes podcasts accessible to people who heretofore couldn’t enjoy them like everyone else. This is, of course, predicated on the notion the transcript, like many captions, isn’t crap.
Put another way, transcripts are to podcasts what haptic feedback is to music.
Despite Marco Arment being a longtime friend, I switched from using his Overcast as my preferred podcast player to using the stock Apple Podcasts app on my iPhone and iMac. I did so largely because of the immense accessibility transcripts provide me; Apple announced support for transcripts a little over a year ago, which is when I made the decision to change over. I still adore Overcast for myriad reasons—not the least of which because Arment is a staunch ally of the disability community and prioritizes accessibility in his app. What could sway me to return to Overcast is, if come WWDC, Apple announced a “TranscriptKit” API for App Store developers (like Arment) to hook up to their apps. Pocket Casts seemingly has built their own framework, but an API officially blessed by Apple would go a long way to not only helping users, but help app makers for whom rolling their own is beyond their technical ken for whatever reason(s).
