I've disabled reblogs on my rant about censorship in speech-to-text because too many people are being annoying, but I still have more to say on the topic so it's getting its own post now.
The key reason why many responses to the og post are so annoying is because they are missing the point. Now, I'll grant that it lacks context, since it was an off-the-cuff rant, so here it is: I was using the built-in STT function on my Windows laptop. I can't remember if I had my current laptop at that point so idk if I was using W10 or W11. Anyway, Windows has two ways of accessing STT. The one I was using was a scaled-down version that is purely for dictation; at the time, there was no way to turn off the profanity filter (although you can now). The other way to access STT in Windows is to use Voice Control, which allows you to control your machine with your voice and also has STT capability; for this, you can turn off the profanity filter, but it is (or was) on by default.
As for the point that so many people are missing: this was primarily a post expressing deep frustration that the needs of disabled people (or anyone who has to use STT) are secondary to the sensibilities of corporations. in my case, that happened to be Microsoft, but the point stands for any STT software that has the profanity filter on by default. Accessibility features should not restrict the user, especially not by preventing them from doing something that an abled user can do just fine. If you have to go hunting in settings or resort to forums or search engines to find out how to turn the filter off, that's a failure of accessibility because a person who can type physically doesn't need to do that.
Now, the profanity filter certainly has an arguable use-case. STT isn't perfect and sometimes it will interpret your words as something completely wrong, which might cause problems in certain professional settings. Ideally, though, the filter would be an opt-in feature rather than set as the default. But the mere existence of a profanity filter presents problems by itself: namely, who gets to decide which words are profane, and why are they choosing those words specifically? As illustrated in my original post, whoever set the profanity filter for Windows had decided that anatomically-correct terms for female genitals were profane (clitoris and clit got masked by asterixes and vagina nearly did, presumably because the filter would mask 'vag'), but 'penis' was just fine (although 'cock' wasn't). 'Nipples' is also masked. Do we think, perhaps, these choices are governed by the long-standing misogynistic framing of female anatomy as something inherently sexual? Even if that wasn't the reasoning, the end result certainly reinforces those beliefs.
The same problem occurs in auto-captions that censor swear words when the audio doesn't. YouTube is notorious for this. It's bad enough that they are sabotaging an accessibility feature, but worse still is that they have placed themselves in a position of power over any d/Deaf and HoH people watching: they now get to decide what we can understand in a video. It's especially galling because textphone workers and sign language interpreters are held to very strict standards re: translating exactly what is said, swears, slurs, slang and all.
Censorship in an accessibility feature also exists in the wider social context of disabled people being controlled and infantilised. Whether the designers of profanity filters intend this or not is irrelevant, because the end result, again, reinforces bigoted beliefs and enables harmful behaviour – in this case, the belief that disabled people must be "protected" from "dangerous" words or concepts / the normalisation of controlling disabled people. You don't need to look far to find this in action, either. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices often aren't designed to allow their users to swear, use slang or discuss subjects like sex or their genitals. AAC-users are left at the mercy of others, who get to decide which words they can or cannot use, ultimately stripping them of freedom of self-expression and autonomy and increasing their vulnerability to abuse or exploitation.
This is from the blog of a speech and language pathologist (emphasis mine):
As a speech therapist, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked by teachers to remove a taboo word from a student’s AAC device because it’s considered “inappropriate.”
To extend an analogy from that post: if that teacher taped a verbal, nondisabled child's mouth shut as punishment for using a specific word, there would be a (much-deserved!) uproar. It is unlikely that teacher would be able to keep their job. But they are perfectly comfortable asking for a disabled child's means of self-expression to be taken away. If that doesn't perfectly illustrate how normalised it is to control disabled people, I don't know what will.
Even if companies are not intentionally adding profanity filters to restrict what disabled people can do or say, the fact they have gotten away with it for so long speaks to the systemic oppression of disabled people. You can be sure that if something 99% of nondisabled people use had similar restrictions imposed upon it, there would have been a massive backlash and push for change – imagine if everyone's phone keyboards stopped you from typing swear words or slang. But because this is an issue that disproportionately affects disabled people, it has been a long, slow and difficult slog towards positive change.
