Chinese live captions and productivity tool for lectures

China has the largest deaf and hard of hearing population in the world — 27.8 million people, according to the Second National Sample Survey on Disability. The Chinese university system was not built for this population. Until 2014, deaf students were required to complete the listening component of the national English examination (Gaokao) to qualify for university admission — an exam requiring hearing students to demonstrate spoken-English comprehension. The modification that followed — exempting deaf students from the aural section — addressed one moment in a system that remains structurally inaccessible at every other.

Only a handful of mainstream universities in China admit deaf applicants. Most are directed toward special education-focused institutions that limit the academic disciplines available to them. Deaf students often begin university a year later than hearing peers because of curriculum staging in the special education pipeline. Research documenting the experience of deaf students navigating Chinese higher education describes a consistent pattern: formal inclusion policies that dissolve on arrival at the institution, and an absence of in-lecture support that leaves deaf students to manage with whatever residual hearing they have — or without (Pulitzer Center, 2021).

A 2025 PMC study on university adjustment among deaf and hard of hearing students found that communication barriers in lecture-based learning environments remain the primary driver of academic underperformance — independent of students' intellectual ability (PMC12505907, 2025). China has no formal national recognition of Chinese Sign Language as an official language. Certified interpreter provision in higher education is concentrated in cities and institutions with specialist programmes — not in the mainstream university lecture halls where most deaf students study.