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.

Here at Digital Hearing Care we are always looking to add value to our service, that is too all our existing clients, potential future clients, and I guess for the hard of hearing population at large.

To that end we have decided to put a little work into improving the hearing aid maintainence videos we host on our YouTube account, it has been somewhat neglected over the last year or so and has been ripe for an overhaul.

We have at present around 15 general videos on maintainence of hearing aids at present which we intend to add to over time and possibly post other hearing aid related videos too that might be of interest. We suggest you take a look at the YouTube account and bookmark it for future browsing. Click here to go to the selection of videos.

The videos will be of particular interest to our clients in the UK and overseas that buy hearing aid accessories from our mail order sister website Hearing Aid Batteries where as well as hearing aid batteries at terrific pricing you can buy wax guards, domes, speaker (receiver) wires etc etc.

Sometimes you just need a little guidance (often outside office hours) and these online videos are terrific at showing visually how to deal with / insert / attach a particular accessory to your hearing aids.

We hope you find the service of use and welcome any comments and suggestions on future videos you would like us to post.