In what can be termed as one of the biggest experimental moves online, the Google-owned YouTube will make use of automatic speech-recognition and closed-captioning technology to make its videos more accessible to the hearing impaired, by inserting automatic captions on them.

The auto-captioning technology, which was introduced by Google in November, will improve the accessibility of YouTube’s visual clips not only to the deaf and the hard of hearing users, but also to any user searching for videos online, including search engines.

With product manager Hunter Walk noting that “access to content” is “a core part of YouTube’s DNA;” YouTube elaborated that the auto-captioning feature would help the company ‘democratize’ information, as well as “help foster greater collaboration and understanding.”

The automatic captions’ move – which YouTube has been testing with some of its partners like the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and National Geographic since November - will initially be incorporated only in English language videos.

Meanwhile, for software engineer Ken Harrenstien, who has been deaf since childhood and has worked on the project for the last five years, the launch of the auto-captioning is “what I have dreamt about for so many years. The fact that you can now go on to any video online and expect to see captions is unbelievable and the fact I had a part in this is great.”