New in iOS 7 and Android KitKat: Customize Subtitles and Captioning

Both iOS 7 and Android KitKat include the ability to customize captions. Now both major mobile operating systems include the ability to customize movie and video subtitles system wide.. For iOS, the customization settings are under Settings > General > Accessibility > Subtitles & Captioning. From that menu you are able to change the appearance of subtitles of any video played through the default iOS video player. There are many options for customization including font, font size, font color, and background color. Android includes a similar feature that can also be accessed in the settings menu. These options are a welcome addition to mobile devices and can make subtitles much easier to see. It is great to see both Apple and Google improving accessibility on their mobile products.

Amara Free Crowd Sourced Captioning For YouTubers

A service called Amara allows YouTubers to get crowd sourced help captioning their videos. Millions of people, particularly those with hearing impairments, rely on captions in order to watch movies and videos. Amara's goal is to have more captioned videos on the web. Anyone with a YouTube account can register with Amara.org for free. Then volunteers caption the videos for free. After the volunteers caption the videos the captions are then added to your YouTube video. Captioning videos can be difficult for individual video creators. Now with Amara there is no reason for YouTubers not to have their videos captioned. People can also volunteer to help caption more web videos.