Tyler Oakley just made a decision which should please a previously-underserved segment of his fans. In the spirit of inclusion, the YouTube star who currently boasts over 6.8 million subscribers across two channels has closed captioned every single one of his videos.
Oakley’s closed captioning announcement video starts off with no sound at all (in fact, I reloaded the page a few times because I thought there was a loading error). The effect is jarring for those who aren’t hard of hearing, and makes you consider the fact that without the closed captioning option, many people miss out on Oakley’s videos all together.
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In the upload, Oakley explains how he considered adding closed captions for a while. However, he was ultimately pushed to action when his fans kept bringing up the subject and he saw a video from YouTuber Ricki Poynter explaining the benefits of the YouTube feature. “If you want to consume my stuff, you can,” he said. “Whether you’ve always been able to from the start, or now, if you are deaf or hard of hearing or if you’re learning English or whether you just like to read videos instead of hear videos, now it is an option for you.”
Oakley noted how easy it is to do closed captioning yourself or hire an outside company to do it for you (if you have the means). At the end of his video, he asks his non-English-speaking fans (if they feel so inclined) to caption his videos in their native languages to make them accessible to foreign-language speakers. Oakley is also encouraging all YouTubers to use closed captioning to “spread the love to a whole new community that just wants to be able to enjoy the content that a lot of other people get to enjoy.”
