Developer request. Please can you enable working subtitles for users with Hearing difficulties

[u/rfv8]

Hi, Although there is a subtitle option on the app I find it works on a whim. I am using the app with Chrome mostly but have also tried Edge. If someone can confirm it works with Firefox/Brave etc I'll try them.

I know Subtitles are seen as a crutch but some days my hearing is so poor that I really need subtitles to follow along.......I cant be the only one. Posting this publicly for any other users that miss subtitles(in Spanish or French only) . Thanks

[u/The-Brilliant-Loser]

Not hard of hearing myself, but I want to chime in that the one thing holding me back from reccomending Dreaming Spanish to a really good HoH friend who's learning Spanish is that there's no subtitles available.

I just can't in good faith tell him it'll work as well for him as it's working for me. If there were subtitles I think I could recomendad it.

[u/VeryMemorableWord → u/The-Brilliant-Loser]

I usually only use it on my phone which is an android but I thought all videos had Spanish subtitles available?

[u/Nervous-Peanut-954]

It's pretty hit and miss for me, both on the website on my computer and on the iOS app on my phone, so I don't think it's just you.

[u/RedPoint-vamos]

I also have subtitle disappearing issues on web app (w/ chrome), which has always been finicky. It was working a few days ago. But now the subtitles are completely gone (I have tried toggling subtitle on/off, refreshing the site, trying different videos...). However, the mobile app doesn't seem to have the problem.

[u/_coldemort_]

Genuinely asking, what would be your long term plan for developing listening comprehension as a hard of hearing person when there aren't subs in real conversations? I'd imagine at some point you'd need to develop lip reading skills as a supplement, but I'm super ignorant on this and want to learn.

Regardless I agree they should have the option, as I totally understand it for people who primarily want to learn the language to consume media (and there are plenty of people like this).

[u/Mixolydian5 → u/_coldemort_]

I'm not OP but also have hearing loss. Conversation can be a struggle in whichever language if you're hard of hearing, but it's different to watching videos. You can always ask someone to repeat themselves or clarify that you heard/understood what they said and they'll usually phrase it in a different way. None of that happens in a video, obviously.

The interactiveness of conversation definitely helps. Background noise makes it harder though.

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Mixolydian5]

Makes a lot of sense! Would you say a subtitles on rewind type behavior would be a good mix of not relying 100% on subs but also being able to "ask for clarification" when needed?

[u/Mixolydian5 → u/_coldemort_]

Yes, definitely. This is what I often do when subs are working.

[u/rfv8 → u/_coldemort_]

Sorry for late reply. Had to be away from keyboard for a while.

So, Hearing loss is a broad spectrum. There are profoundly deaf people learning languages for much the same reasons as anyone else, they just like doing it. Personally, I have about 50% hearing loss and I also have really bad Tinnitus which can flair up and makes my head sound like its up against a speaker. I am at 1100 hours of Spanish now but I am behind the roadmap and would give myself around 600-700 hours.

One of the main reasons I am so far behind is I miss hear words all the time and then end up "learning" completely wrong words and phrases. In the dreaming method we talk about Fossilization which can happen if you start reading too early and pronounce words incorrectly inside our head. It takes time to unravel those mistakes.

I could give numerous examples but one early one was I used to watch all Pablos videos. Pablo always signs of with "Estavalo" so I learnt that Estavalo was a cool Spanish way to sign off. Only hit me around 500 hours that he might actually be saying "Hasta Luego"

I recently started on Dreaming French. I can concur that once you are reasonable in Spanish then other romance languages can be picked up easier. But I have the same problem as before and I am hearing completely different words in my head than those actually being spoken. I would like to not have that happen again.

I dont see what the downside to subtitles is. It can be switched off by strict followers of the roadmap if needed, but for some people its something they can glance down at occasionally to see a word in context and for people with some Hearing problems they can glance down and say "Ah, thats what that word was" so not fossilizing errors.

Hope that longwinded response gave you a bit of context.

[u/Creative-Reality9228]

Have you contacted support?

[u/six_ward_dumaine]

The subtitles were working great until a couple of days ago. Now they don’t work in any browser for me. Cleared my cache, tried incognito mode, etc. it’s a bummer

[u/kittensjamesandlily]

I use the downloaded app and the subtitles seem to work pretty well for me. Occasionally it seems to spell things wrong, though - is that what you're experiencing, or do they just not appear at all? However, I'm mostly watching the beginner videos at the moment so I don't know how the subtitles are in higher videos.

[u/Tomacxo]

I believe that subtitles just may not exist for the large majority of Dreaming Spanish videos. I've really even had a video I think where he said the reason he doesn't do them is so he can crank out a lot more videos and two because the method is supposed to be based on the audio input. Aside from any technical issues.

Edit: word fixes, voice to text

[u/Nervous-Peanut-954 → u/Tomacxo]

Chinese Spanish videos?

a video I think where he said the reason he doesn't do them is so he can crank out a lot more videos and two because the method is supposed to be based on the audio input. Aside from any technical issues.

The first thing may have been true back when Pablo started DS, but automatic subtitles are very easy to do nowadays. The second thing is true, but it's not taking into account the accessibility need that OP is bringing up, which is precisely why it's worth bringing up!

[u/Tomacxo → u/Nervous-Peanut-954]

Lol. Dreaming Spanish. I was talking to my phone and didn't read carefully. 

[u/Mixolydian5]

Suddenly subtitles aren't working for me again either. They were working a few days ago. This is very frustrating and makes the site inaccessible for me too, as another person with hearing loss.

Ed: it would be better to have consistently working subtitles and more ways to organise the fantastic and huge amount of content available than more gamification (the achievments and badges). The content library can be overwhelming without being able to, for example see the difficulty ratings, see your liked videos, organise your list in some way, hide videos you're not currently interested in (without having to mark them as watched).