Wordly adds live audience reactions to meeting captions

Wordly has launched Audience Engagement for its meetings and events platform, adding live audience reactions and sentiment tracking to its caption and translation service.

The tool lets attendees react to specific moments in a live caption stream, highlight statements and save notes during a presentation. Organisers can monitor those interactions as sessions unfold and review which parts of a presentation prompted responses.

Attendees can take part from their phones without creating an account or signing in. The feature also works without additional audiovisual equipment, specialist hardware or changes to existing production workflows, according to Wordly.

Audience Engagement sits alongside Wordly's existing services, including real-time translation in dozens of languages, live captions, post-event summaries and engagement analysis. Attendees can export personalised highlights, session notes and summaries in their preferred language.

The product is aimed at conferences, corporate meetings, training sessions and other events where organisers want to track audience responses during a session rather than rely solely on surveys afterwards.

Reactions are linked to specific sentences in the live caption feed, allowing organisers to identify points where audience attention or sentiment changes. Wordly said this could help event teams assess session effectiveness and identify the subjects that draw the strongest response.

Founded around live AI translation and captioning, Wordly is widening its offering from language accessibility into audience measurement and participation. It says it has been used by more than 6 million people across more than 120 countries and has handled more than 1 billion minutes of live multilingual translation.

For example, attendees can pin emoji reactions directly to a statement in the caption stream. They can also mark key moments and keep personal takeaways without moving to a separate application.

The approach is intended to give organisers a closer view of how audiences respond to content as it is delivered. It also gives attendees a way to track points they consider relevant without interrupting the session.

"We designed this experience to fit naturally into the tools and workflows event teams already use," said Lakshman Rathnam, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Wordly. "Attendees can participate from their phones, while organizers gain new insight without adding equipment or complexity to event production."

Broader push

The launch extends Wordly's role across more of the event process, from preparation and live translation to audience interaction and post-session content management. The company said the link between participation and session data is becoming more important as organisers seek clearer evidence of what audiences take from an event.

Wordly also pointed to pressure on event budgets and the need for organisers to show value to both attendees and sponsors. It said this makes tools for tracking engagement and takeaways more relevant to event planning and evaluation.

"The future of events will be defined by how well organizers deliver measurable value to attendees and sponsors," said Rathnam. "In a challenging economy, every event needs to work harder. Organizers need to create experiences that are accessible, engaging, and worth the investment, while demonstrating what audiences actually take away. Technology that helps connect participation with measurable outcomes will be increasingly important to the future of the industry."

Wordly has also been raising its profile in the software market as it broadens beyond translation and captions. It was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for the second consecutive year in 2026, ranking No. 521 overall and No. 52 among software companies.

Audience Engagement is available to Wordly customers worldwide. "Over the past seven years, organizations around the world have trusted Wordly to break down language barriers through live translation and captions," said Rathnam. "Now we're building on that foundation by helping attendees engage with content, not just consume it, while giving organizers real-time insight into what resonates."