Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Welsh live captions and productivity tool for communicating with deaf & hoh

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.

👨‍👩‍👧Family conversations

A Welsh-speaking family dinner in Gwynedd, Cardiff, or the Valleys where grandparents speak strong North or South Welsh, parents mix Welsh and English, and children switch freely. Captio AI captions every voice at the table.

💼As a hearing colleague

A Welsh household where conversations happen spontaneously — morning exchanges in Welsh, remarks in English, and quick switches between the two. Captio AI keeps a deaf or hard of hearing person in those moments.

❤️Partners and relationships

At home with a hearing partner whose family speaks Northern Welsh — a variety with different vowels and prosody from South Welsh. Captio AI captions their speech correctly so home life does not require extra effort.

🏠Living together

Spontaneous exchanges at the local shop, pharmacy, or post office in a Welsh-speaking community. Captio AI captions what the person at the counter is saying in real time — in Welsh, in English, or in both.

🤝Introducing someone new

A community Eisteddfod event, local gathering, or neighbourhood celebration in a Welsh-speaking town, where conversations move fast between Welsh and English. Captio AI captions the conversation so a deaf or hard of hearing person is part of it.

👥Mixed group settings

Meeting a partner's Welsh-speaking family for the first time, or being introduced to neighbours in a Welsh-medium community. Captio AI captures the first conversation in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Welsh
85.7%

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

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.

Welsh

Why Welsh is hard to understand

Consonant mutations

  • Three types of initial mutation change the first consonant of a word — the lip shape shifts completely
  • Welsh has three classes of initial consonant mutation — soft, nasal, and aspirate — that change the first consonant of a word based on grammatical context. 'Pen' (head) becomes 'ben', 'mhen', or 'phen' in different constructions. A lip reader sees an entirely different consonant position for words that are grammatically forms of the same item — the mutation is invisible from grammar but changes the entire visual lip profile.

Voiceless lateral /ɬ/

  • Welsh 'll' is produced with lateral airflow and looks identical to /l/ from outside
  • Welsh 'll' is the voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ] — produced by placing the tongue tip at the alveolar ridge and releasing air laterally, with no lip movement. From outside the mouth it looks identical to the voiced lateral /l/. Two words distinguished only by voiced vs voiceless lateral articulation appear the same to a lip reader.

Voiceless nasals and resonants

  • Welsh has voiceless versions of nasal consonants — sounds rare in European languages, invisible at the lips
  • Welsh has voiceless versions of nasal consonants (/m̥/, /n̥/, /ŋ̊/) and a voiceless lateral resonant — sounds rare in European languages that look visually identical to their voiced counterparts. A lip reader encounters additional homophone pairs created by a voicing distinction they cannot see.

North–South dialect split

  • Northern Welsh and Southern Welsh differ in vowel length, consonant realizations, and prosody
  • Northern Welsh (Cymraeg y Gogledd) and Southern Welsh (Cymraeg y De) differ significantly in vowel inventory, consonant realizations, and prosody. The vowel /ɨ/ in the north has no counterpart in the south. A deaf person calibrated to one variety encounters a different phonological profile from speakers of the other.

Welsh–English switching

  • Wenglish — Welsh-English code-switching — creates an unpredictable phonological stream in South Wales
  • In South Wales particularly, speakers shift fluidly between Welsh and English, often mid-sentence. A deaf or hard of hearing person faces an unpredictable alternation of two phonological systems — Welsh consonant mutations and voiceless consonants alongside English phonology — in the course of a single family conversation.

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The Challenge

Wales has 575,000–610,000 deaf and hard of hearing people, no dedicated deaf mental health service, and a proposed BSL Bill still awaiting legislative action.

An estimated 575,500 to 610,000 people in Wales live with hearing loss or tinnitus, according to RNID Cymru data and Welsh Government estimates. Of these, approximately 5,600 to 7,300 people use British Sign Language in Wales, based on projections derived from Scottish Census and England GP Patient Survey figures. Despite Wales having its own devolved government with an active disability policy agenda, Wales remains the only country in the United Kingdom without a dedicated deaf mental health service.

A January 2025 Institute of Welsh Affairs report calling for a BSL (Wales) Bill documented persistent barriers to service access for deaf and hard of hearing people in Wales: ineffective communication systems in the NHS, a lack of flexible booking arrangements, and insufficient deaf awareness training for health professionals. A 2024 peer-reviewed study (PMC11358617) on deaf people's experiences in Welsh health services found that health providers still routinely phoned deaf patients despite knowing they were deaf — a pattern of systemic inaccessibility that extends beyond the clinic into daily life.

The linguistic complexity of Wales — where 29.2% of the population speaks Welsh and everyday speech shifts between Welsh and English — adds a specific dimension to communication access for deaf people. A deaf or hard of hearing person in a Welsh-speaking community may encounter Welsh consonant mutations, voiceless lateral fricatives, and North–South dialect differences alongside English phonology in the course of a single family meal.

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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

"My family speaks strong North Welsh with the northern vowel system. Captio AI reads their speech correctly and I follow the full family dinner now — mutations and all."

Sioned W. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
sioned.w***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing family speaks North Welsh from Gwynedd, Bangor

"My partner's family speaks South Welsh and switches to English constantly. Captio AI reads both languages correctly and family visits are easy now."

Rhys T. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
rhys.t***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing partner's family from the Valleys speaks South Welsh mixed with English, Cardiff

"My neighbours speak Welsh and the consonant mutations change the first sound of every other word. Captio AI handles it all correctly and I am part of the community now."

Megan P. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
megan.p***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing neighbours in Welsh-medium community, Aberystwyth

"My workplace uses Welsh throughout the day and conversations move fast. Captio AI keeps me in every conversation without anyone needing to slow down or repeat."

Dafydd E. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
dafydd.e***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing colleagues at a Welsh-medium workplace, Caernarfon

"My family speaks strong North Welsh with the northern vowel system. Captio AI reads their speech correctly and I follow the full family dinner now — mutations and all."

Sioned W. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
sioned.w***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing family speaks North Welsh from Gwynedd, Bangor

"My partner's family speaks South Welsh and switches to English constantly. Captio AI reads both languages correctly and family visits are easy now."

Rhys T. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
rhys.t***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing partner's family from the Valleys speaks South Welsh mixed with English, Cardiff

"My neighbours speak Welsh and the consonant mutations change the first sound of every other word. Captio AI handles it all correctly and I am part of the community now."

Megan P. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
megan.p***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing neighbours in Welsh-medium community, Aberystwyth

"My workplace uses Welsh throughout the day and conversations move fast. Captio AI keeps me in every conversation without anyone needing to slow down or repeat."

Dafydd E. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
dafydd.e***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing colleagues at a Welsh-medium workplace, Caernarfon

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Make every conversation work — for both sides in Welsh.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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