Spotify announces podcast transcripts and a more user-friendly design

Spotify is going even harder on podcasts.

What you need to know

• Spotify today announced that it would be rolling out new accessibility-focused features to its mobile apps.
• It’s bringing a small redesign of its app to make it easier to use if you’re visually impaired.
• You’ll also now be able to generate transcripts for a selection of Spotify Exclusive or Original podcasts in the coming weeks. Spotify plans to make this universal in the future.

Spotify today announced a couple of new features aimed at making its experience more accessible to everyone, primarily those who are visually and hearing impaired. It’s rolling out updates to both its iOS and Android apps towards these ends.

The first update is a small one, aimed at making Spotify clearer when in use. Buttons will be bigger, the text is now sentence case, and the company will be making some tweaks to color and text formatting.

Spotify also announced support for large text, alas, for iPhone users and not for Android phones at this time. You can head over to the folks at iMore for more on handling font sizes on an iPhone. Interestingly, some demand for this on Android phones exists just looking at the company’s community forums, but it has yet to implement this.

The biggest change coming with this release is autogenerated podcast transcripts. It’s being tested for a selection of Spotify Originals and Spotify Exclusive podcasts at the moment. In the future, Spotify plans to make this available to all podcasts that can be played via its apps. When these transcripts become available over the coming weeks, they’ll allow users to read the texts of podcasts with the option of even cutting out the sound. Essentially, it’s also making listening to podcasts more efficient for those who read faster than they can listen.

The company has been investing in podcasts over the past couple of weeks — and while these updates do help accessibility, the auto-generated podcast transcripts would make using Spotify more alluring for podcast aficionados. For the largest podcast creators, it’ll be yet another tool driving them right into Spotify’s arms.

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Spotify remains the king of music streaming platforms. With its availability on all major operating systems and support for Google’s Nest speakers, it is a great choice for an Android owner.