Dutch live captions and productivity tool for communicating with deaf & hoh
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Dutch communicating with deaf & hoh
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Dutch speakers.
You speak. They read.
- Your words appear on their screen word by word
- No sign language required from you
- Works at home, at work, anywhere
- Any accent, any pace
When language is also a barrier
- You speak your language, they read in theirs
- Translates in real time as you speak
- 60+ languages, no setup
- Handles mid-sentence switches
Save the conversation for them
- Record and transcribe any exchange
- They can review everything at their own pace
- Organised by speaker
- Any length, any format
Make sure nothing important was missed
- Key points extracted from any transcript
- Useful after appointments, meetings, or important conversations
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Dutch families talk at the kitchen table in the direct, fast cadence of everyday Dutch life. Captio AI captions your hearing family's Dutch in real time so you follow the whole conversation — not just the parts where someone remembered to face you.
In a Dutch office, colleagues talk across open-plan desks and over partitions in the informal Dutch of everyday work. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking so your deaf or hard of hearing colleague follows quick questions, hallway exchanges, and team side-conversations.
When your partner is hearing and you are not, the daily conversation — what's for dinner, how was the commute, what did you hear about the neighbours — is exactly what you deserve to have without effort. Captio AI captions your partner's Dutch naturally.
Morning exchanges over coffee, questions across the room, comments about the nieuws on the radio. Captio AI covers the small daily Dutch moments that make home feel connected — in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, or a village in Friesland.
When you meet a hearing Dutch person for the first time, Captio AI starts immediately. They speak Dutch naturally; you read. No awkward briefing, no searching for a pen.
At a birthday party, a neighbourhood barbecue, or a family gathering with aunts and cousins all talking at once, Captio AI captions whoever you point your phone at so you are part of the conversation rather than following along visually and catching fragments.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
You talk. They follow. No adjustment needed.
You speak naturally
No slowing down, no special phrasing, no training required. Captio AI handles everything — you just talk the way you always do.
They read as you speak
Your words appear on their screen word by word while you are still talking. Not a summary after — the full sentence, in real time.
Works wherever you both are
Living rooms, offices, restaurants, social gatherings. No venue setup, no special conditions. Captio AI works anywhere you have a conversation.
No sign language from either side
You do not need to learn anything new. Neither do they. Captio AI bridges the gap without requiring any change to how either of you communicates.
Works with how you actually speak
Fast, accented, casual. Captio AI handles real speech — not just slow, clear dictation. You do not need to perform clarity for it to work.
Private by default
Your conversations are never recorded, stored, or shared. Audio is processed in real time and discarded immediately — nothing is kept.
Why Dutch is hard to understand
The Dutch G
- The Dutch G is a velar or uvular fricative that produces almost no visible lip movement
- The distinctive Dutch ⟨g⟩ — realised as a velar or uvular fricative — is produced well back in the oral cavity with minimal labial movement. Words like goed, gaan, and groot all begin with a sound that looks identical to an open mouth at rest. G is one of the most frequent consonants in Dutch and one of the least readable on the lips.
Systematic final devoicing
- All Dutch obstruents devoice at word endings — a meaning-changing contrast that is entirely auditory
- Dutch devoices all obstruents in word-final position: bed sounds like bet, hond like hont, bad like bat. A deaf or HoH person reading lips can see the articulation at the beginning of a word, but the voiced/voiceless distinction at the end — which changes meaning — is inaudible and invisible. Over a full sentence, multiple such ambiguities stack up.
Dense diphthong inventory
- Dutch diphthongs move through two vowel positions mid-syllable at a pace too fast to read reliably
- Dutch has a rich set of diphthongs — ij/ei, ou/au, ui — that shift from one vowel position to another within a single syllable. On the lips, a diphthong shows a brief intermediate shape, but the trajectory is often too fast to read reliably at conversational speed. At the kitchen table or the supermarket checkout, diphthong-heavy Dutch words can look nearly identical to one another.
Belgian–Netherlands accent gap
- Flemish Dutch from Belgium sounds and looks different enough from Netherlands Dutch to mislead
- The Dutch spoken in Belgium (Flemish) differs markedly from Netherlands Dutch in vowel quality, intonation, and consonant realizations — the Belgian G is a softer bilabial fricative, very different from the Netherlandic uvular. In a mixed Dutch-language household with Flemish and Dutch family members, a deaf or HoH person must constantly recalibrate between the two.
Schwa reduction cascade
- Unstressed syllables reduce to schwa or disappear entirely at conversational Dutch speed
- Dutch drops unstressed syllables aggressively in natural speech — eigenlijk becomes ielijk, gewoon becomes woon, hebben becomes be at the pace of a normal family conversation. The reduced forms are how family members actually talk at home. For a deaf or HoH person, the gap between the full word they recognise from written Dutch and the reduced form actually spoken can make familiar words unrecognizable.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in the Netherlands: scale, recognition, and the interpreter gap
The Netherlands has approximately 1.5 million deaf and hearing-impaired people, of whom more than a third use hearing aids and around 150,000 purchase hearing aids each year. A PubMed study of the Dutch population found a prevalence of severe hearing loss — 70 dB or worse — of 1.3 per thousand, with the overall burden of significant hearing impairment substantially higher. Age-related hearing loss affects a large proportion of the Dutch population over 65, a group that is growing rapidly as the Netherlands ages.
Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT — the Sign Language of the Netherlands) received legal recognition in October 2020, after more than three decades of advocacy by the Dutch deaf community. The recognition was a landmark moment, but it came with a condition that deaf linguists and organisations contested: the Dutch government required standardisation of the NGT lexicon before granting recognition. Even after recognition, NGT interpretation remains a limited resource. Waiting times for interpreter bookings run to days or weeks for non-emergency situations, and informal daily life — the kitchen table, the workplace corridor, the neighbour at the door — is not covered by formal interpretation provision.
In daily domestic settings, deaf and hard of hearing Dutch people navigate hearing family conversations without accommodation. A deaf person living with hearing family members in Rotterdam or a village in Overijssel faces the same situation: hearing family members speak Dutch at Dutch pace and the deaf or HoH person either follows or does not. The 25 hours of annual free interpretation that some European countries provide barely covers official appointments, let alone the hundreds of hours of ordinary conversation that constitute a connected family life.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat 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.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"My partner talks at full Dutch speed and the G sounds and dropped syllables were always a problem for me. Captio AI reads his Dutch in real time and I follow our evening conversations without asking him to slow down or repeat."
"Flemish Dutch and Netherlands Dutch sound different enough to confuse me. My Flemish family's G is softer and their vowels shift. Captio AI reads both varieties correctly and I follow family gatherings now."
"Open office in Rotterdam means conversations happen all around me. Captio AI captions my colleagues' Dutch in real time and I follow desk-side questions without needing people to write things down or repeat."
"My grandchildren speak the fast informal Dutch of their generation — syllables drop, words compress. Captio AI reads their speech and I follow without asking them to slow down for me."
"My partner talks at full Dutch speed and the G sounds and dropped syllables were always a problem for me. Captio AI reads his Dutch in real time and I follow our evening conversations without asking him to slow down or repeat."
"Flemish Dutch and Netherlands Dutch sound different enough to confuse me. My Flemish family's G is softer and their vowels shift. Captio AI reads both varieties correctly and I follow family gatherings now."
"Open office in Rotterdam means conversations happen all around me. Captio AI captions my colleagues' Dutch in real time and I follow desk-side questions without needing people to write things down or repeat."
"My grandchildren speak the fast informal Dutch of their generation — syllables drop, words compress. Captio AI reads their speech and I follow without asking them to slow down for me."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Make every conversation work — for both sides in Dutch.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store