Caption Every Lecture.
Without the Cloud Bill.
Universities produce hundreds of hours of video every semester — lectures, training, research, communications. Vosuba captions it all on your Mac, overnight, with no per-minute fees and no GDPR risk from cloud uploads.
Where universities need captions
Every department produces video. Most of it is uncaptioned.
Lecture & Seminar Recordings
Teams, Zoom, and Panopto recordings pile up daily. Accessibility teams can't manually caption every session. Vosuba batches an entire week overnight on one Mac.
Typical volume: 20–100+ hrs/semester per departmentOnline & Hybrid Course Content
LMS platforms (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Panopto, Kaltura) require SRT or VTT files alongside video. Vosuba exports both — ready to upload.
Required by: Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, KalturaStaff Training & HR
Mandatory onboarding, HR policy, and Continuing Professional Development video. The Equality Act requires these to be accessible to disabled staff — not just students.
Equality Act 2010 s.20 anticipatory dutyResearch & Conference Talks
Recorded seminars, symposia, and open-access research presentations. Often posted publicly — making PSBAR / WAD captioning requirements directly applicable.
Open access = public-facing = PSBAR appliesStudent Media Projects
Film, journalism, and media departments produce student content that may be published externally. Departments can integrate Vosuba into the standard production workflow.
Media, Film, Journalism, Communication deptsMarketing & Recruitment Video
Open day videos, prospectus content, alumni communications. Public-facing — must meet WCAG 2.2 AA under PSBAR. Captioning also improves watch-through rates.
Comms, Marketing, Student Recruitment teamsWhy it matters beyond the law
Captions improve outcomes for every viewer — not just those who need them.
Your compliance obligations at a glance
Each jurisdiction has its own law. All require WCAG-aligned captions on pre-recorded video.
United Kingdom
- PSBAR 2018 — all public university websites & apps must meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Pre-recorded video must have synchronised closed captions.
- Equality Act 2010, Section 20 — anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students and staff without waiting for individual requests.
- UK GDPR — lecture recordings containing identifiable people are personal data; any cloud processing requires a written Data Processing Agreement.
Source: legislation.gov.uk; jisc.ac.uk
European Union
- Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102) — all EU public universities must meet EN 301 549 / WCAG 2.1 AA across websites, intranets, and mobile apps.
- Universities must publish an accessibility statement and provide a way for users to report failures.
- EU GDPR Article 28 — sending student footage to a cloud captioning service requires a signed Data Processing Agreement.
Source: European Commission; w3.org
United States
- ADA Title II — public universities must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA by 26 April 2027 (extended from 2026 by a DOJ Interim Final Rule, April 2026).
- Section 504 — institutions receiving federal funding have owed effective communication accessibility since 1973. The 2027 date is not a new obligation.
- FERPA — lecture recordings are education records. Sending them to a cloud processor without a "school official" designation agreement may be a FERPA violation.
Source: ada.gov; ed.gov
The cost of outsourcing captioning
Scenario: a department captioning 10 hours of lecture video per week
| Option | Weekly cost | Annual cost | GDPR / FERPA risk | Wait for delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human-verified captions (Rev, 3Play Media) ~£1.20–£1.60/min published rate |
~£720–£960 | ~£37k–£50k | Yes — DPA required | Hours to days |
| Vosuba (per Mac workstation) | Included | £199 / year | None — fully local | Faster than real-time |
Cost estimates based on published pricing by Rev.com and riverside.com (2024). Actual costs vary by provider, volume, and turnaround tier. Vosuba accuracy varies by audio quality; human review recommended for formal records.
What you get with Vosuba
100% local processing
All AI runs on your Mac. Nothing leaves your network. No cloud vendor, no DPA/BAA, no data transfer outside the EU or UK.
WCAG 2.2 AA validation
Built-in compliance checker validates CPS (reading speed), line length, and synchronisation against WCAG 2.2 Level AA success criteria.
SDH sound descriptions
60+ standardised non-speech labels ([APPLAUSE], [ALARM], etc.) for Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
LMS-ready export formats
SRT, VTT, and ASS export compatible with Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Panopto, and Kaltura.
Batch processing
Caption entire semesters of lecture recordings overnight on a single workstation. No queues, no per-minute charges.
Accessibility report export
Export a compliance summary per file — useful for accessibility audits, PSBAR accessibility statements, and institutional records.
Speaker identification
Automatic speaker diarisation labels each speaker separately — essential for panel discussions, seminars, and multi-speaker lectures where attribution matters for SDH compliance.
AI Voiceover Studio
Re-narrate or dub existing lecture recordings with 26 AI voices. Useful for re-recording poorly-captionable audio, adding narration to silent screencasts, or producing alternative language versions — all on-device.
Common questions from accessibility teams
Does PSBAR apply to all university video content, including internal staff training?
PSBAR applies to content published on public-facing websites and apps. Intranet content accessed only by employees may be exempt — but the Equality Act 2010 still applies and requires reasonable adjustments for disabled staff. The safe and legally defensible position is to caption all institutional video.
Source: JISC Accessibility guidance (jisc.ac.uk)
Does GDPR apply when we use a captioning service for lecture recordings?
Yes, if the recording contains identifiable individuals (students, lecturers). Under UK GDPR / EU GDPR Article 28, you must have a written Data Processing Agreement with any third-party processor before transferring the footage. Your institution remains the Data Controller and is fully liable for the processor's compliance. Vosuba processes all video locally — no footage is ever transferred to us.
Source: ICO (ico.org.uk); GDPR Article 28 text (gdpr-info.eu)
Are automated captions from YouTube or Teams sufficient for compliance?
No. UK guidance from JISC and the ICO, and US guidance from Section508.gov, both note that automatically generated captions typically do not meet the accuracy threshold required for WCAG compliance. A layer of human review or AI-assisted editing is required. Vosuba generates a high-quality AI draft that you edit — significantly faster than correcting raw ASR output.
Source: Section508.gov; JISC (jisc.ac.uk)
Can we claim disproportionate burden to avoid captioning?
Under PSBAR, a "disproportionate burden" exemption is possible but has a high threshold — it requires a documented assessment of cost vs. benefit, formal publication in your accessibility statement, and provision of accessible alternatives wherever possible. Given that Vosuba costs £199/year per workstation, the disproportionate burden argument becomes very difficult to sustain for most departments.
Does Vosuba work on Windows?
Vosuba is currently macOS-only (Apple Silicon M1 or later). It is suited for accessibility teams, media departments, and instructional design units that already operate on Mac. Contact us if Windows support is a requirement — we are evaluating it for a future release.
Interested in institutional licensing?
£199 per Mac workstation per year. Volume pricing for teams of 5 or more. We respond within one business day.
This page is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Compliance obligations vary by institution type, country, and specific circumstances. Always consult your institution's legal counsel, Data Protection Officer, or accessibility coordinator. UK PSBAR information sourced from legislation.gov.uk. EU Web Accessibility Directive information sourced from the European Commission. Equality Act 2010 from legislation.gov.uk. UK GDPR / GDPR Article 28 from ico.org.uk and gdpr-info.eu. US ADA Title II information from ada.gov. FERPA information from ed.gov. Captioning cost estimates from Rev.com and riverside.com (2024).