YouTube’s looking to improve the accuracy of its auto-generated captions on video clips, by crowdsourcing corrections in-stream, which other viewers can then also upvote to endorse.
As explained by YouTube:
“To continue improving the captioning experience on YouTube, we’re experimenting with the ability for viewers on desktop to suggest corrections to auto-generated captions. This test will roll out on a small percentage of EN-language channels with auto-generated captions enabled.”
So now, if you’re watching one of the videos that’s in the experiment, you’ll be able to suggest caption corrections by tapping on the gear icon and selecting “subtitles” on the clip. From there, you’ll be able to view the transcript, tap the pencil icon, then enter your suggestions.
Other viewers will then also be able to upvote suggested corrections in the transcript, by tapping on the caption text in red and viewing suggestions.
“During the experiment, suggested corrections to the captions track will not be automatically merged into the video for viewers, but creators whose captions receive suggested corrections will be able to view these suggestions in the transcript panel.”
It could be a good way to improve the accuracy of YouTube’s auto caption tools, with users able to submit corrections as they watch.
That’ll help improve accessibility, and likely search results as well, with Google indexing YouTube transcripts for Search queries.
As noted by YouTube, the test is currently only available on a limited number of uploads in English.
