Tamil 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 Tamil communicating with deaf & hoh
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Tamil 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.
Tamil family meals — in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, or a village home in Tamil Nadu — often move fast, with multiple generations speaking colloquial Tamil at full speed, mixing English words and occasionally switching regional registers. A hearing family member speaks naturally. Captio AI captions what they say in real time so a deaf or hard of hearing family member follows without asking anyone to repeat.
Tamil workplaces in Chennai and Coimbatore run in a fast blend of Tamil and English. A hearing colleague speaks in whichever mix comes naturally. Captio AI captions everything so a deaf or hard of hearing colleague follows desk conversations, quick instructions, and corridor talk without missing a word.
When your partner is deaf or hard of hearing and Tamil is the language you use at home. You speak naturally — the colloquial, contracted Tamil of daily life. Captio AI puts every word on their screen as you say it so nothing is lost between you.
Everyday home life in a Tamil household — calling from another room, talking during the evening serial, 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 have to guess at.
When a deaf or hard of hearing person meets a new hearing Tamil speaker — at a family function, a temple event, or a neighbourhood gathering. Set up Captio AI and the conversation begins naturally, without anyone needing to adjust how they speak.
Group settings — a family gathering for Pongal, a large multi-generation meal, or a community event — 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
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 Tamil is hard to understand
Retroflex-rich inventory
- Tamil has more retroflex consonants than almost any other language — all invisible
- Tamil has one of the largest retroflex consonant inventories of any language: retroflex stop /ʈ/, retroflex lateral /ɭ/, retroflex nasal /ɳ/, and the unique retroflex approximant /ɻ/ (ழ, as in 'தமிழ்' itself). All are produced with the tongue curled deep in the mouth — far behind the lips. For a deaf lip-reader, these sounds produce no visible mouth shape difference from their dental counterparts.
Extreme diglossia
- Formal written Tamil and spoken family Tamil are almost different languages
- Tamil has an unusually deep diglossia: formal centamil and colloquial koduntamil are so different that a deaf person who learned Tamil from written resources encounters something almost unrelated when a hearing family member speaks naturally at home. Verb forms, vocabulary, and phonology all shift between the two registers — and hearing families use only the colloquial variety.
Three-way liquid distinction
- Tamil has four varieties of /l/ and /n/ — all look the same at the lips
- Tamil distinguishes dental /n̪/, alveolar /n/, and retroflex /ɳ/, and similarly makes a four-way distinction across the liquid series: dental /l̪/, alveolar /l/, retroflex /ɭ/, and the retroflex approximant /ɻ/. All eight sounds are produced with the tongue, invisible behind the lips. These distinctions occur throughout everyday Tamil words and are entirely inaccessible to lip-readers.
Very low lip visibility
- Tamil speech uses less lip movement than most other languages
- Research on Tamil phonetics notes that there is very little lip rounding action in Tamil speech. Unlike European languages where distinct vowels produce dramatically different lip shapes, Tamil produces most of its phonological distinctions with the tongue and the back of the mouth. A deaf lip-reader gets less visual information per syllable in Tamil than in almost any other language.
Regional dialect range
- Sri Lankan Tamil and Indian Tamil create two separate lip-reading challenges
- Sri Lankan Tamil (Jaffna) and Indian Tamil (Chennai, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Madurai) differ in phonology, prosody, and vocabulary. A deaf Tamil speaker accustomed to one variety finds that a hearing family member from the other region produces different mouth shapes for some shared words — and even within Tamil Nadu, regional varieties add another layer of visual unpredictability.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in Tamil Nadu: the second most common disability, underserved
Hearing disability accounts for 19% of total disability in Tamil Nadu — the second largest disability category in the state after movement disability, and the leading cause of sensory deficit (National Medical Journal of India). Nationally, approximately 63 million people in India suffer from significant auditory impairment — 6.3% of the entire population (WHO). Community-based studies report disabling hearing loss prevalence between 4.5% and 18.3% depending on age and rural-urban location, with rural areas and older populations consistently carrying the highest burden.
India's National Programme for Prevention and Control of Deafness (NPPCD) operates in Tamil Nadu, but coverage is uneven and heavily concentrated in urban centres. For the majority of Tamil-speaking deaf and hard of hearing people — in smaller towns, in coastal fishing communities, in agricultural villages — access to audiological care, hearing aids, or formal sign language education remains limited. Indian Sign Language (ISL) has been making slow gains in recognition, but its penetration into Tamil-speaking communities outside Chennai and Madurai remains very thin.
The GBD 2019 study identified India as carrying a disproportionate share of the global burden of hearing disability, with South Asia overall accounting for a substantial fraction of years lived with disability due to hearing loss (PMC7960691). For a deaf or hard of hearing person in a Tamil household, the communication gap at the family table is structural — not a temporary inconvenience. Captio AI captions natural spoken Tamil in real time, in the colloquial register that hearing families actually use, so a deaf family member reads exactly what their relatives are saying at a Pongal table or a daily family meal.
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
"Chennai Tamil at home speed is mostly colloquial forms I never learned from written Tamil. Captio AI reads what my husband actually says — the informal, fast speech — not just formal Tamil. I follow our conversations now."
"Tirunelveli Tamil is different from what is on television. My family's speech was very hard to follow. Captio AI reads their dialect accurately and I keep up with the family table for the first time."
"Office Tamil in Coimbatore is half English. I was tracking neither language reliably. Captio AI captions the whole sentence — the Tamil and the English — and I follow the whole conversation."
"Jaffna Tamil sounds different from Indian Tamil — the vowels and some words are distinct. Captio AI handles the Sri Lankan variety correctly and I understand what my family is saying at the table without asking them to repeat."
"Chennai Tamil at home speed is mostly colloquial forms I never learned from written Tamil. Captio AI reads what my husband actually says — the informal, fast speech — not just formal Tamil. I follow our conversations now."
"Tirunelveli Tamil is different from what is on television. My family's speech was very hard to follow. Captio AI reads their dialect accurately and I keep up with the family table for the first time."
"Office Tamil in Coimbatore is half English. I was tracking neither language reliably. Captio AI captions the whole sentence — the Tamil and the English — and I follow the whole conversation."
"Jaffna Tamil sounds different from Indian Tamil — the vowels and some words are distinct. Captio AI handles the Sri Lankan variety correctly and I understand what my family is saying at the table without asking them to repeat."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Make every conversation work — for both sides in Tamil.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store