Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

German live captions and productivity tool for conferences & events

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

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Captio AI app showing live captions

Download for free

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Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

🎤Keynotes and main stage talks

From a far seat in a keynote hall in Berlin, Munich, or Vienna, the speaker is distant and the acoustics are hard. Point Captio AI toward the nearest PA speaker and read every word of the German keynote from any seat.

🔬Academic and research conferences

At an academic conference — a research congress at a German university or a scientific meeting in Zurich — presenters speak fast and stack long compound terms. Captio AI captions in real time and transcribes for later review.

💼Industry and professional events

Industry events and trade fairs in Frankfurt or Hamburg carry content that affects your work directly. Captio AI captions every speaker and panellist so you follow the whole session.

📋Workshops and breakout sessions

In a workshop or breakout, several voices contribute in German from around the table. Place Captio AI on the table and follow every contribution, including from the back of the room.

🤝Networking and informal sessions

The most useful conversations often happen over coffee and at the conference dinner. Captio AI works in these noisy, informal settings the same way it does in the main hall.

🌍International and multilingual events

At an international conference, sessions switch between German and English. Live Translator captions foreign-language talks in real time so you follow the full programme.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

German
93%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

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Captio AI in everyday use
Why Captio AI

Built for the room where you cannot ask anyone to repeat

Live captions from any seat

Point the phone toward the nearest PA output or speaker. Captio AI captions whoever is presenting in real time — from the front row or the back of a large conference hall.

Works without venue infrastructure

No hearing loop, no captioning service, no advance booking required. Captio AI works independently via microphone — whether or not the venue has provided any accessibility infrastructure.

Covers what official captioning does not

Official captioning, where it exists, typically covers the main stage only. Q&A sessions, workshops, breakouts, and networking are usually left uncaptioned. Captio AI covers all of it.

Record and review after

Record any session and upload it to Audio Transcription for a full written record. Use AI Summary to extract key takeaways — useful for dense technical content you want to process at your own pace.

60+ languages

For international conferences, foreign-language keynotes, or multilingual panels. Live Translator captions and translates in real time across 60+ languages with no manual switching between speakers.

Works for networking too

The conversations in hallways and at lunch matter as much as the sessions. Captio AI works in any setting — informal, noisy, unstructured — the same way it works in the main hall.

German

Why German is hard to understand

Long compound nouns

  • Whole concepts packed into one unbroken word
  • German builds long compound technical terms — a single word can stack several ideas together. From a distant stage a deaf attendee who misses one syllable in the middle of a compound loses the entire term, and academic and industry German is full of them.

Final devoicing

  • Word endings that lose their voicing
  • In German, b, d, and g become p, t, and k at the end of a word. The ending a lip-reader relies on to tell two terms apart is neutralised exactly where it matters, and in a fast keynote the distinction is gone from the mouth entirely.

Front rounded vowels

  • ü and ö look like u and o on the lips
  • German ü and ö are made with rounded lips and a front tongue, so they look like plain u and o from the audience but make different words. In a technical talk delivered at pace, the vowel that changes a term is invisible from a seat in the hall.

Austrian and Swiss varieties

  • Vienna and Zurich do not sound like Berlin
  • A conference in Vienna or Zurich brings Austrian German and, especially, Swiss German — which differs so sharply from standard Hochdeutsch that even Germans need subtitles. A deaf attendee calibrated to standard German meets very different vowels and consonants from a Swiss or Austrian presenter.

Vowel length

  • The same word, long or short, means two things
  • German contrasts long and short vowels — the difference between 'Stadt' and 'Staat' is timing, not lip shape. At podium pace, the length distinction that separates two technical terms gives a lip-reader nothing to see.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and professional access in the German-speaking world

Hearing loss is common across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Large German cohort studies — including the Gutenberg Health Study — put the prevalence of moderate-to-complete hearing loss (35 dB or more) at around 12.7%, and systematic reviews find overall rates ranging from 16% to 25% of the adult population depending on how hearing loss is measured. Many of these people are the researchers, engineers, and specialists who fill conference audiences in Berlin, Munich, and Zurich.

The German-speaking world hosts an enormous share of Europe's academic congresses, trade fairs, and industry events — the Frankfurt fairs, the Munich technology summits, the university conferences across all three countries. These run on spoken German delivered over PA systems, with English woven into technical sessions. Real-time German captioning of keynotes, panels, and Q&A is rarely provided, and where captioning exists it covers the main stage, not the breakouts and networking where professional value is built.

Captio AI closes that gap. Point the phone toward the PA and read every German keynote and panel answer from any seat, record a dense technical session for the full transcript, and follow the conversations over coffee — so a deaf professional in Berlin or Zurich gets the same value from the same conference as everyone in the hall.

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Privacy

What you hear stays with you.

Gone the moment it ends

Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.

Not a product

Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.

Not used to train anything

What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.

100% PRIVATE

Private by default

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Reviews

People love Captio AI

"German keynotes stack these enormous compound terms, and from the back of the hall if I miss one syllable I lose the whole word. Captio AI captioned the talk from my seat and I recorded it for the transcript. I followed a full congress session for the first time."

Lukas B. 🇩🇪
lukas.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Berlin — academic researcher

"Austrian and German speakers on the same panel, and I lip-read them differently. Captio AI captioned both without me adjusting. I read the whole discussion instead of catching only the presenter whose accent I knew best."

Andrea H. 🇦🇹
andrea.h***@gmail.com
Deaf, Vienna — industry conference attendee

"Swiss German is a different world from Hochdeutsch, and when a speaker slips into it I am lost. Captio AI handled it and captioned the English terms our field uses too. I left the launch knowing exactly what changed in the roadmap."

Reto M. 🇨🇭
reto.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Zurich — product manager

"Networking over coffee is where the real conversations happen, and it used to be where I switched off. Captio AI captioned the informal chats at the reception so I could take part. That is where I met my first investor."

Katrin S. 🇩🇪
katrin.s***@gmail.com
Deaf, Munich — startup founder

"German keynotes stack these enormous compound terms, and from the back of the hall if I miss one syllable I lose the whole word. Captio AI captioned the talk from my seat and I recorded it for the transcript. I followed a full congress session for the first time."

Lukas B. 🇩🇪
lukas.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Berlin — academic researcher

"Austrian and German speakers on the same panel, and I lip-read them differently. Captio AI captioned both without me adjusting. I read the whole discussion instead of catching only the presenter whose accent I knew best."

Andrea H. 🇦🇹
andrea.h***@gmail.com
Deaf, Vienna — industry conference attendee

"Swiss German is a different world from Hochdeutsch, and when a speaker slips into it I am lost. Captio AI handled it and captioned the English terms our field uses too. I left the launch knowing exactly what changed in the roadmap."

Reto M. 🇨🇭
reto.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Zurich — product manager

"Networking over coffee is where the real conversations happen, and it used to be where I switched off. Captio AI captioned the informal chats at the reception so I could take part. That is where I met my first investor."

Katrin S. 🇩🇪
katrin.s***@gmail.com
Deaf, Munich — startup founder

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Follow every speaker in German.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store