French 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 French communicating with deaf & hoh
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing French 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.
French family meals — whether in Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, or a village in Provence — are long, loud, and fast. Hearing family members talk over each other, drop into familiar register, and use the linked casual speech that is nothing like textbook French. Captio AI captions what each person says in real time so a deaf or hard of hearing family member follows the whole table.
French workplaces move between formal French in meetings and fast casual French in the corridor. A hearing colleague speaks naturally in whichever register fits the moment. Captio AI captions everything so a deaf or hard of hearing colleague keeps up with the informal exchanges that make up most of a working day.
When your partner is deaf or hard of hearing and French is the language you share at home. You speak naturally — the casual, contracted French of daily life. Captio AI puts every word on their screen as you say it so nothing is lost between you.
Everyday French home life — calling from another room, talking over the evening news, quick exchanges in the kitchen. Captio AI covers the continuous thread of home conversation that a deaf or hard of hearing family member might otherwise piece together from fragments.
When a deaf or hard of hearing person meets a new hearing French speaker — at a dinner party, a family introduction, or a social gathering. Set up Captio AI and the conversation starts naturally, without anyone needing to adapt how they speak.
Group settings — a family Sunday lunch, a dinner party, or a mixed gathering — where some people are deaf or hard of hearing and some are not. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking so every person at the table is fully part of the conversation.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
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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 French is hard to understand
Liaison erases word boundaries
- French linked speech makes it impossible to find where words begin
- French liaison means a normally silent word-final consonant is pronounced before a vowel-initial word — 'vous avez' sounds like 'voozavay' with no detectable gap between words. For a deaf lip-reader, this linked speech provides no cue to where individual words begin. Words they know cannot be located within the continuous stream.
Nasal vowels at the lips
- Nasal vowels change meaning but leave no trace at the lips
- French has four nasal vowels (/ɑ̃/, /ɛ̃/, /ɔ̃/, /œ̃/) that distinguish meaning — 'vin' vs. 'van', 'grand' vs. 'gros'. Nasal resonance is entirely internal. A 2024 JSLHR study confirmed that cochlear implant users perform significantly worse on nasal vowel identification than hearing peers. For lip-readers, the mouth shape alone does not signal nasality.
Final consonant deletion in casual speech
- Casual French drops the consonants and syllables that anchor lip-reading
- In informal French, word-final consonants and entire syllables drop: 'il y a' → 'ya', 'je ne sais pas' → 'chais pas', 'tu as' → 't'as'. Hearing family members speak in this register at home. A deaf lip-reader trained on formal French encounters a different phonological landscape in every casual conversation.
Metropolitan vs. Québécois vs. Belgian divergence
- French from Paris, Montréal, and Brussels are three different lip-reading tasks
- Parisian, Québécois, Belgian, and Swiss French each have distinct vowel lengths, vowel qualities, and liaison rules. A deaf person who lip-reads one variety cannot straightforwardly transfer those skills to a hearing family member from another region — the entire vowel system shifts.
Schwa instability
- The same French sentence looks different at the lips every time it is spoken
- Schwa /ə/ is optionally deleted in casual French, changing syllable structure unpredictably. 'Je ne le vois pas' may collapse to 'j'vois pas' or 'j'le vois pas' — each with a different lip pattern. Fast casual French creates a moving target: the same sentence looks different every time it is spoken.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in France: one in four adults, one in three without help
A large-scale study from the CONSTANCES cohort, published in JAMA Network Open and supported by France's Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (Inserm), found that 25% of French adults have some form of hearing loss — and that disabling hearing loss, the more severe end of the spectrum, affects 4% of adults (PMC9206187). That is approximately 2.6 million people in France with clinically significant hearing impairment who struggle to follow conversation in everyday conditions. Of those, only 37% wear a hearing aid consistently — a striking gap between the scale of need and the scale of support.
France has recently extended Social Security reimbursement for hearing aids — a meaningful policy step — but the change has not yet reached the majority of people who need it. Langue des Signes Française (LSF) has a community of users, and LSF interpretation is available at some public events, but daily home life, family meals, and workplace conversations remain entirely outside the scope of formal accessibility provision. The structural gap is large: millions of people in France navigate communication with hearing family members without any institutional support for those interactions.
Older people, men, those with diabetes, and those exposed to occupational noise carry the highest hearing loss risk in France — and these are exactly the groups who sit at the centre of French family and social life. As the French population ages, the number of hearing-impaired people in French households will continue to grow. Captio AI captions natural French speech in real time, at a Sunday lunch in Lyon or an evening conversation in a Paris apartment, so a deaf or hard of hearing family member reads exactly what their hearing relatives are saying — liaison, nasal vowels, casual contractions and all.
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
"Parisian French at home is nothing like the French I studied — 'chais pas', 't'as', liaisons everywhere. Captio AI reads what my husband actually says, contracted forms and all. I follow our conversations without missing the casual details that carry the most meaning."
"Sunday lunches in Lyon go for hours and everyone talks at once. I was following about half of it. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking in real time and I am finally part of the whole table, not just the conversations close to me."
"Belgian French has longer vowels and some different vocabulary. Captio AI handles it accurately — my colleagues speak naturally and I read everything correctly. I stopped asking for written follow-ups after meetings."
"Québécois French is very different from what I grew up lip-reading in France. The contractions and vowels are completely different. Captio AI reads my grandchildren's Québécois speech correctly and I follow their conversations without asking them to slow down for me."
"Parisian French at home is nothing like the French I studied — 'chais pas', 't'as', liaisons everywhere. Captio AI reads what my husband actually says, contracted forms and all. I follow our conversations without missing the casual details that carry the most meaning."
"Sunday lunches in Lyon go for hours and everyone talks at once. I was following about half of it. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking in real time and I am finally part of the whole table, not just the conversations close to me."
"Belgian French has longer vowels and some different vocabulary. Captio AI handles it accurately — my colleagues speak naturally and I read everything correctly. I stopped asking for written follow-ups after meetings."
"Québécois French is very different from what I grew up lip-reading in France. The contractions and vowels are completely different. Captio AI reads my grandchildren's Québécois speech correctly and I follow their conversations 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 French.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store