YouTube, the video sharing network, has announced it is improving its automatic captions to help hearing impaired viewers.

The enhancements to the service will enable automatic subtitles in three languages, English, Japanese and Korean, and users of YouTube can search for videos specifically that have subtitles. Non automatic subtitles are available in 155 different languages and dialects.  The viewer can also adjust the font size, type and colour if visually impaired or for personal preference.

YouTube started caption support in 2006, and since then over 1.6 million caption enabled videos have been uploaded.

The background to this development may owe something to legislation passed by the US administration in 2011 specifying that TV shows broadcast with captions should also display them online, but nonetheless is a good move for the hard of hearing and visually impaired.