TikTok Pledges Its fealty Towards ‘Building an Accessible and Inclusive’ platform in new blog post
In marking this year’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day, TikTok on Wednesday announced the ways in which the company is “[spotlighting] the diverse voices that make TikTok a platform for creativity, self-expression, and community.” Accessibility, TikTok says, isn’t merely a function of design or an ancillary component of its product—it’s “a continued priority as we look to make the TikTok experience positive for everyone, including people with visual, auditory, motor and cognitive differences.”
“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,” TikTok wrote. “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. This Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we invite you to explore content from creators with disabilities, try accessibility features, and join us in creating a platform that’s truly for all.”
In its mission to “continuously [improve] the TikTok experience to help people create, connect and enjoy content on TikTok,” TikTok used its post to detail the available accessibility features. Chief among them, particularly for such a visual medium like TikTok, is alternative text, colloquially known as alt-text, for photos. The company says it’s testing leveraging artificial intelligence to help users create alt-text, which is read aloud to Blind and low vision users by screen readers such as Apple’s venerable VoiceOver. (Using AI to help generate alt-text is a genius use of the technology, especially for novices who need guidance.) As a practical matter, TikTok writes alt-text is not only worthy for inclusivity’s sake, it’s worthy because “these features improve usability for people who are blind, have low vision, or process content differently.”
Beyond alternative text, TikTok also details the ability to enable increased contrast and bold text, noting both are intended to accommodate for enhanced readability. If alt-text is designed for reading without sight, or little at all, then contrast and bold text do the inverse. And really, increased contrast and bold text go hand-in-hand despite having some nuanced differences in what each feature attempts to accomplish for the user.
“These new features join our existing suite of accessibility tools, including auto-generated captions for videos, dark mode, text-to-speech and thumbnail animation,” TikTok said. “People can find all of these features on the redesigned accessibility settings page on TikTok, which makes it easier for people to navigate our features.”
TikTok concludes its post by highlighting a few popular creators, who have disabilities, on the platform. They include Taylor Lindsay-Noel, Tiffany Yu, and Kaelynn Partlow.
People can learn more about TikTok’s accessibility features on this webpage.
