Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Catalan live captions and productivity tool for doctor appointments

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

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Captio AI app showing live captions

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Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

🩺GP and primary care visits

At a centre d'atenció primària (CAP — primary care centre) in Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, or a smaller municipi, your metge explains symptoms and treatment in Catalan. Captio AI captions every word in real time.

🔬Specialist consultations

At a specialist appointment at Hospital de la Vall d'Hebron or a regional hospital, medical terminology arrives in Catalan or Spanish. Captio AI captions both in real time so you follow every detail.

💊Pharmacy conversations

At the farmàcia (pharmacy), the farmacèutic explains dosage and drug interactions quickly in Catalan. Point your phone toward them and read the instructions as they speak.

🦷Dental appointments

At the dentista (dental clinic), the dentist gives instructions during treatment when lip-reading is impossible. Captio AI captions from audio alone.

🧠Mental health sessions

In a session with a psicòleg or psiquiatre, sensitive topics require full comprehension. Captio AI captions the entire session so you engage without missing context.

🚑Emergency and urgent care

At urgències (the emergency department), staff speak quickly under pressure. Open Captio AI and read their instructions in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Catalan
89.3%

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

Built for the conversations where every word matters

Captions as the doctor speaks

Words appear on screen while the doctor is still talking. You read the diagnosis, drug name, or follow-up instruction at the same moment it is said — not after they have moved on.

Medical terminology handled accurately

Drug names, procedure names, clinical terms. Captio AI handles the vocabulary of a real consultation — not just everyday speech.

Review the appointment after

Record the consultation and upload it to Audio Transcription. Get a full written record of everything said — instructions, dosages, referrals — to review at home and share with a carer if needed.

Works in any clinical setting

Consultation rooms, hospital wards, A&E, dental chairs, pharmacy counters. Place the phone near the speaker and Captio AI captions whoever is talking.

Any language

For foreign-language doctors, specialists abroad, or appointments through an interpreter. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so you follow your diagnosis in the language you understand best.

100% private

Medical conversations are among the most sensitive there are. Captio AI processes audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded, stored, or shared.

Catalan

Why Catalan is hard to understand

Vowel reduction in Eastern Catalan

  • Unstressed vowels neutralise and disappear in Eastern Catalan
  • Eastern Catalan (spoken in and around Barcelona, the largest Catalan-speaking city) has extensive unstressed vowel reduction: /a/ and /e/ both reduce to schwa /ə/, and /o/ reduces to /u/ in unstressed position. In fast clinical speech, a Catalan doctor in Barcelona is producing a stream where many of the vowel shapes a deaf patient expects to see have merged into a single central vowel or disappeared entirely. Words that look three syllables long on paper look shorter and different on the lips.

Schwa invisibility

  • The Catalan schwa produces minimal and ambiguous lip movement
  • The schwa /ə/ — the most common unstressed vowel in Eastern Catalan — produces a neutral, slightly open lip shape that is nearly indistinguishable from an adjacent unstressed syllable. In clinical vocabulary where multiple unstressed syllables follow each other, a deaf patient lip-reading Eastern Catalan sees a sequence of similar neutral shapes with no visual differentiation. The content is in the audio, not on the lips.

Valencian vs Eastern Catalan gap

  • Valencian and Eastern Catalan sound markedly different in the same clinical vocabulary
  • Valencian — spoken in the Valencian Community south of Catalonia and recognised as a separate standard variety — preserves full vowel quality in unstressed positions, contrasting sharply with Eastern Catalan's reduction. The same medical term sounds and lip-reads differently in Valencian vs Eastern Catalan. A deaf patient trained in one variety finds clinical staff from the other speaking in a phonologically distinct system.

Balearic Catalan

  • Mallorcan and Minorcan Catalan have archaic vowel distinctions
  • Balearic Catalan (spoken in Mallorca, Minorca, Ibiza) preserves medieval phonological distinctions absent in Eastern and Western Catalan, including different realisation of historical /a/ vowels and archaic forms in clinical vocabulary. A deaf patient from mainland Catalonia attending a clinic in Palma encounters Mallorcan lip shapes for Catalan words they know well — different enough to require active reinterpretation.

Catalan–Spanish code-switching

  • Clinical speech in Catalonia switches between Catalan and Spanish mid-sentence
  • In Catalan healthcare settings — hospitals, health centres, pharmacies — code-switching between Catalan and Spanish is common, varying by doctor, by hospital, and by patient. A deaf patient who lip-reads Catalan encounters Spanish for certain clinical terms or entire sentences, with no advance signal of the switch. Tracking two phonological systems in the same appointment is a sustained cognitive load that adds to the inherent difficulty of lip-reading either language alone.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss in Catalonia and Spain: 1 million people, landmark recognition in 1994, and the COVID information gap

In Spain, 1,064,000 people — representing 2.3% of the population — are deaf or have a significant hearing disability. Catalonia was the first Spanish Autonomous Community to grant official status to a sign language: Catalan Sign Language (Llengua de Signes Catalana, LSC) received recognition in 1994 through regional law, 13 years before Spanish Sign Language received national legal recognition. The Catalan Federation of Deaf People (FESOCAT), founded in 1979, has been central to this advocacy. Today there are approximately 18,000 to 25,000 LSC users across the Catalan-speaking territories.

Despite this early recognition, a 2021 study published in PMC examining the impact of COVID-19 on people with hearing disabilities in Spain documented accessibility failures that the recognition framework did not prevent. During the pandemic, authorities issued critical health information — restrictions, vaccine protocols, emergency guidance — through formats that were inaccessible to deaf people. In Catalonia, public health communication that was available in Catalan and Spanish was not consistently provided in LSC. The research found that people with hearing disabilities experienced systematic violations of their right to be informed during a public health emergency — revealing how thinly the practical implementation of accessibility reaches even in the most legally developed regional framework in Spain.

In clinical settings specifically, the LSC bilingual education programme in Catalonia reached 185 deaf children in school year 2019/2020, while approximately 1,700 deaf and hard of hearing children were enrolled in oral-only programmes. This pattern — a small bilingual-signing minority and a large oral-communication majority — reflects how most deaf Catalan adults navigate the healthcare system: through spoken Catalan or Spanish, without LSC, and with the communication barriers that spoken clinical language imposes. Captio AI captions Catalan and Spanish in real time at any CAP or hospital in Catalonia or the Valencian Community, so every patient receives their doctor's words directly.

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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 metge at the CAP speaks Barcelona Catalan at full speed — every unstressed vowel reduces to schwa and half the syllables I expect to see disappear. Captio AI captions the full consultation and I leave understanding my diagnosis."

Marta Puig 🇪🇸
marta.p***@gmail.com
Severe sensorineural hearing loss, Barcelona

"Valencian preserves vowels that Eastern Catalan doesn't — my cochlear implant does well in Valencia but struggles when I see a Barcelona specialist. Captio AI captions both varieties and I follow any appointment anywhere in the Catalan lands."

Joan Ferrer 🇪🇸
joan.f***@gmail.com
Profound deafness, uses cochlear implant, Valencia

"Mallorcan Catalan sounds different from mainland Catalan — the vowel shapes are distinctive. At the hospital in Palma I could not follow my specialist. Captio AI captions Balearic Catalan perfectly and I followed the full consultation."

Núria Mas 🇪🇸
nuria.m***@gmail.com
Moderate bilateral hearing loss, Palma, Mallorca

"The farmacèutic in Girona switches between Catalan and Spanish mid-sentence — I never know which language is coming. Captio AI captions both and I read every drug instruction clearly. No more guessing which pill to take first."

Pau Sala 🇪🇸
pau.s***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Girona

"My metge at the CAP speaks Barcelona Catalan at full speed — every unstressed vowel reduces to schwa and half the syllables I expect to see disappear. Captio AI captions the full consultation and I leave understanding my diagnosis."

Marta Puig 🇪🇸
marta.p***@gmail.com
Severe sensorineural hearing loss, Barcelona

"Valencian preserves vowels that Eastern Catalan doesn't — my cochlear implant does well in Valencia but struggles when I see a Barcelona specialist. Captio AI captions both varieties and I follow any appointment anywhere in the Catalan lands."

Joan Ferrer 🇪🇸
joan.f***@gmail.com
Profound deafness, uses cochlear implant, Valencia

"Mallorcan Catalan sounds different from mainland Catalan — the vowel shapes are distinctive. At the hospital in Palma I could not follow my specialist. Captio AI captions Balearic Catalan perfectly and I followed the full consultation."

Núria Mas 🇪🇸
nuria.m***@gmail.com
Moderate bilateral hearing loss, Palma, Mallorca

"The farmacèutic in Girona switches between Catalan and Spanish mid-sentence — I never know which language is coming. Captio AI captions both and I read every drug instruction clearly. No more guessing which pill to take first."

Pau Sala 🇪🇸
pau.s***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Girona

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Understand your diagnosis in Catalan.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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