Live captions and translation for university lectures
Waavoo provides real-time captioning for lectures, or a live translation, on every student’s phone and on the lecture hall screen. The lecturer speaks as usual; students open a link, with no app and no account. Audio is never recorded, and captions are deleted at the end of the session.
Who do live captions help in class?
- Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, who read the lecture as it is spoken, in the lecturer’s own language: French to French, for example.
- International cohorts, who read the translation in one of seven languages: French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or Dutch.
- The whole lecture hall, to re-read a technical term or follow from the back row.
A session shows a single language: either captions in the language of the lecture, or a translation. Serving both audiences at once takes two simultaneous sessions, subject to availability.
Each student adjusts the display on their own screen: five themes, including a high-contrast one, and text size from 24 to 150 px. The details are in our accessibility statement.
How does a captioned lecture work?
The lecturer speaks as usual, into the lecture hall microphone. The Waavoo console runs in a web browser on a laptop and listens to that microphone, ideally through the sound system output.
The session’s QR code appears on the projection screen, and the link can also be sent to students. They read the captions or the translation on their phones, or straight on the room’s screen in projection mode.
The full setup and recommended equipment are covered on our live translation for conferences page.
What should your institution know?
- Audio is never recorded. The lecturer’s voice is turned into text in real time and discarded. Captions and translations are deleted at the end of the session.
- Nothing is used to train models. Speech-to-text and translation run on our own AI models: no third-party AI service processes the audio.
- Our servers are in France, with backup compute servers in Montréal that only take over when the French ones are unavailable.
- Students have no account. They read through a plain link, without giving any personal information.
The full details are in our privacy policy.
What do the rules say?
In the United States, the regulations implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act require the colleges they cover to furnish appropriate auxiliary aids and services where necessary for effective communication, unless that would be an undue burden (28 CFR 35.160 for public institutions, 28 CFR 36.303 for private ones). Real-time captioning and real-time computer-aided transcription are among the examples they list; the Department of Justice describes real-time captioning (CART) as a service in which a transcriber types what is said.
In Canada, universities and colleges fall under provincial law. In Québec, section 10 of the Charter of human rights and freedoms guarantees the full and equal exercise of human rights and freedoms, without discrimination based on a handicap or the use of any means to palliate it.
These rules name services, not products. Whether a given tool provides effective communication for a given student is decided case by case, with the student and your disability services office (under Title II, the student’s request gets primary consideration). Waavoo can be part of the answer; it does not replace that assessment.
What are the limits?
- Specialized vocabulary. Names and rare terms can be misheard. We do not publish an accuracy figure yet; the safest test is an excerpt of your own lectures.
- Anything off-mic. A question asked from the floor without a microphone is not captioned.
- One language per session: captions or translation, not both on the same session.
- No transcript after class: that is the price of keeping nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Do captions replace a sign language interpreter?
No. For a student who follows lectures in ASL or LSQ, captions complement interpretation; they do not replace it. The accommodation is decided with the student and your disability services office.
Are lectures recorded?
No. The lecturer’s voice is turned into text in real time and discarded immediately; no audio file is ever created. Captions and translations are deleted at the end of the session.
Can students get a transcript of the lecture afterwards?
No. Waavoo does not provide transcripts: no text of the lecture is kept after the session, neither by Waavoo nor for the institution. If a written transcript is required, you will need another solution.
Can captions stay in the language of the lecture?
Yes. Set the same language for the lecturer and the display, French to French for example, and the session shows live captions with no translation.
Do students need to install anything?
No. Students open a web link or scan the QR code shown in the lecture hall: no app, no account. A recent web browser is all they need, on a phone, a tablet or a laptop.