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Enabling Closed Captions on Facebook Live Broadcasts

June 6, 2017

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Supratik Lahiri, Product Manager
June 6, 2017
Today we announced that we now support the display of closed captions on Facebook Live broadcasts — a milestone in making video on Facebook accessible to all members of the community.
More video is being shared and watched on Facebook than ever before, and Live video has become one of the most engaging forms of content on Facebook. Over the past year, daily watch time for Facebook Live broadcasts has grown by more than 4x, and 1 in 5 Facebook videos is a Live broadcast.
With this update, publishers using the Live API can now add CEA-608 standard closed captions to Facebook Live broadcasts, opening up those videos to audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing. People who have their captioning settings turned on will then automatically see closed captions on Live broadcasts on mobile and desktop whenever they're available.
Publishers who don't create their own live closed captions via a CEA-608 data stream can work with third-party captioning companies to generate and insert real-time closed captions into their Facebook Live broadcasts. We’ve been developing and testing this capability at events like this year’s F8, in partnership with captioning services provider Ai-Media. We're excited to allow publishers of all kinds to reach a broader audience with closed captions in Facebook Live
For information on how to add closed captions to Facebook Live broadcasts, click here.

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