Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
TikTok’s Text-to-Speech is both a great accessibility feature for people with visual and reading impairments and a tool to create enjoyable content. While Text-to-Speech is available on devices like tablets or phones via the operating system, it’s relatively forward-thinking for a social app like TikTok to make it available within the app. Other platforms like Twitter and Facebook don’t make use of this feature. Instagram does auto-caption stories but only if someone is already speaking in the video.
The feature doesn’t come without controversy, however. TikTok changed the original voice after the actor filed a lawsuit claiming she had never agreed to be featured in the app. The new voice is less of a monotone than the original and…
