The rise of “readable video” on Facebook brings up an obvious question: What about filmed footage that involves a person speaking (interviews, docs, newscasts, etc)? How can publishers make this content readable for users who don’t want to (or can’t) turn on the volume?

I noticed this weekend that Facebook seems to be throwing out an assist here. If a user adds a caption file (in .srt format) to their video, Facebook will automatically display the captions when they silently autoplay the video in your newsfeed.

For instance, I scrolled past this Upworthy video in the Facebook app over the weekend and it was accompanied by the closed captions that Upworthy had added (probably for accessibility reasons):

If you turn on the volume, the captions then disappear.

This only seems to be happening in the mobile app, however. If you scroll past the same video on desktop, the captions don’t appear. (Facebook may be testing if this feature drives more engagement?)

Will be interesting to see if this makes the jump to desktop as well. It could provide an easy way for TV networks and other producers to quickly make their Facebook uploads “readable” as well.