It’s 2025, and if you’re not thinking about accessibility, what are you even doing? Tech has always promised to break down barriers, and today, that promise gets a little more real. If you’ve ever wished your favorite iOS app could provide accurate and seamless captioning in Danish—good news: it can now.
That’s right, the latest update on Ava for iOS introduces full Danish support, both spoken and translated, making the digital world more inclusive for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community in Denmark.
Why Danish Matters for Accessibility
Danish isn’t just a language—it’s a key to inclusion. More than 800,000 people in Denmark experience some degree of hearing impairment, and many rely on captions and subtitles to fully engage with digital content. While Denmark has strong English proficiency, accessibility is about more than just understanding words; it’s about ensuring that people can consume content in their native language with full comprehension.
Thousands of Deaf Danes use Danish Sign Language (DSL), and while it differs from spoken Danish, accurate captioning makes a huge difference in bridging communication gaps. For individuals who rely on DSL, having native-language captions in Danish makes it easier to transition between spoken and signed content, ensuring nothing is lost in translation.
Enhancing Digital Accessibility with Live Captions
This update goes beyond simple text conversion—it includes full spoken Danish integration, optimized for captioning services. Whether it’s an important meeting, social media videos, or a college lecture, Deaf and hard-of-hearing users can now experience real-time, high-quality captions that accurately reflect Danish speech nuances.
The Bigger Picture: A Commitment to Digital Inclusion
While Danish isn’t endangered, accessibility in smaller linguistic communities is often overlooked. By adding full Danish captioning support, this update does more than make content consumption easier—it fosters digital inclusion, ensuring that Deaf and hard-of-hearing users are not left behind in the tech revolution.
Tech companies must prioritize accessibility, not as an afterthought but as a fundamental design principle. This move sets the stage for other linguistic communities to receive similar updates, breaking language barriers and ensuring equal access to digital content for all.
What’s Next?
Adding Danish to our app is a crucial step, but it also raises the question: What’s next? Can we expect support for more sign languages or enhanced AI-driven captioning for other underserved languages? The road to full digital accessibility is long, but each step—like this one—brings us closer to a world where everyone, regardless of language or ability, has equal access to technology.
For now, though, we’ll take this as a solid step in the right direction. So whether you’re using this new feature to stay informed, communicate more naturally, or just experience content in a language that feels like home—velkommen til fremtiden (welcome to the future).
