Hindi live captions and productivity tool for lectures

The National Association for the Deaf in India estimates 18 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the country — more than three times the 2011 census figure of five million, which many consider a significant undercount. There are only 387 schools for deaf and hard of hearing children across India, serving a country of 1.4 billion. A 2014 study found that approximately 19% of deaf and hard of hearing schoolchildren aged 6–13 were out of school entirely, compared to a national average of 2.97% for all children of the same age. Those who do reach university have already navigated a system with minimal specialist support (360info, 2025).

India's 2016 Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act requires educational institutions to provide inclusive education — including instruction in 'the most appropriate languages and modes and means of communication' for deaf students. In practice, Indian Sign Language (ISL) has no official government recognition as a language, and the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC) remains underfunded relative to the interpreter training need. At most Indian universities, the lecture remains the only format — no captions, no interpreter, no transcript — and the deaf student is expected to manage with whatever hearing they have.

A 2025 study published in Language Policy documented India's structural failure: a policy framework that acknowledges sign language users as a linguistic minority but provides no mechanism to translate that recognition into classroom access (Springer, 2025). For the majority of India's 18 million deaf and hard of hearing people who navigate daily life without formal support, the university lecture hall is simply another setting where the infrastructure does not reach them.