German 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 German communicating with deaf & hoh
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing German 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.
German families often mix Hochdeutsch with regional dialects at the dinner table — Bavarian, Swabian, Franconian depending on where the family is from. A hearing family member speaks naturally in whatever blend comes home with them. Captio AI captions everything so a deaf or hard of hearing family member follows without asking anyone to slow down.
German workplaces move fast — Besprechungen, hallway conversations, quick questions at the Schreibtisch. A hearing colleague speaks naturally, often switching between formal German and relaxed Umgangssprache. Captio AI captions what they say in real time so a deaf or hard of hearing colleague follows every exchange without interrupting the flow.
When your partner is deaf or hard of hearing and German is the language you share at home. You talk at your natural pace — no typing, no gestures, no slowing down into an unnatural register. Captio AI puts your words on their screen word by word as you speak.
Everyday German home life — calling across the kitchen, talking over the evening news, quick questions from the next room. Captio AI covers the mundane exchanges that matter most, so a deaf or hard of hearing household member never misses the thread of home.
When a deaf or hard of hearing person meets a new hearing German speaker for the first time — at a Stammtisch, a family visit, a colleague's partner. Set up Captio AI and the conversation starts naturally, without the awkward briefing about how to speak clearly.
Group settings — a Grillabend, a family reunion, a team lunch — 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 part of the same conversation.
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 German is hard to understand
Consonant cluster blur
- German onset clusters all look the same at the lips
- German onset clusters — /str/, /spr/, /schm/, /kn/ — collapse into a single compound mouth shape. In a family conversation, words like 'schreiben', 'sprechen', and 'schleichen' look nearly identical at the lips. The initial cluster that distinguishes them is invisible.
Final devoicing
- Voiced and unvoiced word-endings look identical in German
- Word-final voiced consonants devoice: /b/→/p/, /d/→/t/, /g/→/k/. A hearing partner saying 'Hund' and 'Hunt' produces the same lip pattern. Deaf lip-readers trained on Standard German miss the voiced-unvoiced pairs that collapse at word ends — a distinction they can only recover from context.
Dialect diversity
- Bavarian, Swabian, and Austrian German each need re-learning
- Bavarian, Swabian, Swiss German, and Austrian German each carry distinct vowel systems and prosodic patterns. A deaf person who lip-reads Standard German finds that a hearing family member speaking Bavarian at a family gathering uses different mouth shapes for the same words.
Compound word momentum
- German compounds bury meaning in their unstressed back half
- Long German compounds front-load stress on the first syllable; the rest are swallowed in natural speech. Following a hearing partner who uses compound-heavy speech at a normal pace means losing entire semantic chunks — the mouth barely opens between elements.
Schwa reduction
- Casual German reduces the syllables that help lip-reading
- Unstressed syllables reduce heavily to schwa or drop entirely in casual German. The articulatory cues that help lip-reading disappear when a family member speaks the relaxed Umgangssprache they actually use at home rather than careful Standard German.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in Germany: the gap between prevalence and visibility
The Gutenberg Health Study, one of the largest population-based cohort studies in Germany, found that 28.2% of adults have at least mild hearing impairment and 10.1% have moderate hearing impairment — figures that translate to millions of people navigating daily communication with reduced access to speech (PMC10132285). Hearing loss is the second most common sensory impairment in Germany, yet formal diagnosis and hearing aid uptake remain well below the actual prevalence — fewer than half of those who need a hearing aid use one consistently.
Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) has an estimated 80,000 users in Germany — a small fraction of the population with significant hearing loss. For the majority of deaf and hard of hearing people who do not sign, communication with hearing family members happens on the hearing person's terms: they speak, and the deaf person manages. There is no mainstream infrastructure in Germany's daily social life — family meals, neighbourhood conversations, workplace hallways — that closes this gap. The adjustment burden sits entirely with the person who can hear least.
Germany has an ageing population, and hearing loss rises steeply with age — affecting the majority of people over 75. As family conversations increasingly include grandparents and older relatives with significant hearing loss, the communication gap grows within households that have no shared sign language and no formal strategy for bridging it. A deaf grandparent at a family table is surrounded by conversation they cannot access — not because no one cares, but because no tool has existed that a hearing family member can simply pick up and use.
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 husband's Bavarian dialect was mostly guesswork for me — the vowels are so different from standard German. Captio AI captions exactly what he says, his dialect and everything. We have actual conversations now instead of me nodding along."
"Office German is not textbook German. My colleagues speak fast and drop syllables and use Hamburger slang. Captio AI keeps up with all of it and I stopped missing the informal exchanges that actually matter in a workplace."
"Austrian German has its own vocabulary and the vowels sit differently in the mouth. I was catching maybe a third. Captio AI reads my partner's Austrian German word for word and our evenings at home are completely different now."
"Family dinners were exhausting — Swabian dialect at full speed with everyone talking at once. I just sat there. Captio AI gives me what each person is saying as they say it. I contributed to a family conversation for the first time in years."
"My husband's Bavarian dialect was mostly guesswork for me — the vowels are so different from standard German. Captio AI captions exactly what he says, his dialect and everything. We have actual conversations now instead of me nodding along."
"Office German is not textbook German. My colleagues speak fast and drop syllables and use Hamburger slang. Captio AI keeps up with all of it and I stopped missing the informal exchanges that actually matter in a workplace."
"Austrian German has its own vocabulary and the vowels sit differently in the mouth. I was catching maybe a third. Captio AI reads my partner's Austrian German word for word and our evenings at home are completely different now."
"Family dinners were exhausting — Swabian dialect at full speed with everyone talking at once. I just sat there. Captio AI gives me what each person is saying as they say it. I contributed to a family conversation for the first time in years."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Make every conversation work — for both sides in German.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store