Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Hebrew 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 קופת חולים (kupat holim — health fund clinic) in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Haifa, your doctor explains a diagnosis in Hebrew. Captio AI captions every word so you follow without missing critical details.

🔬Specialist consultations

At a specialist consultation at Hadassah, Sheba Medical Center, or a regional hospital, medical terminology arrives in formal Hebrew. Captio AI captions in real time so you follow the full explanation.

💊Pharmacy conversations

At the בית מרקחת (pharmacy), the pharmacist explains dosage and drug interactions in fast Hebrew. Point your phone toward them and read the instructions as they speak.

🦷Dental appointments

At the מרפאת שיניים (dental clinic), the dentist gives instructions during treatment when you cannot see their face. Captio AI captions from audio alone.

🧠Mental health sessions

In a session with a פסיכולוג (psychologist), sensitive topics require full comprehension. Captio AI captions the entire consultation so you engage on equal terms.

🚑Emergency and urgent care

At the מיון (emergency room), staff speak quickly under pressure. Open Captio AI and read their instructions as they arrive.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Hebrew
92.5%

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.

Hebrew

Why Hebrew is hard to understand

Guttural consonants

  • Hebrew's throat consonants produce no lip movement
  • Modern Hebrew has several consonants produced in the throat or deep in the mouth — the 'ayin' (ע), 'chet' (ח), and 'resh' (ר) sounds — which are entirely invisible on the lips. These appear constantly in Hebrew vocabulary, including in clinical terms. A deaf or hard of hearing patient lip-reading Hebrew misses a significant portion of every word that contains these consonants.

Trilateral root ambiguity

  • Words built from the same three-letter root look alike on the lips
  • Hebrew vocabulary is built from trilateral consonant roots — a three-consonant base that generates dozens of related words. Words sharing the same root look similar on the lips because they share the same consonant skeleton, differing mainly in vowel patterns that are auditory rather than visual. In clinical vocabulary, where precision matters, two words from the same root can have very different meanings but be nearly indistinguishable on a doctor's lips.

Unvocalised speech

  • Hebrew is written as an abjad — vowels are omitted in normal text
  • Everyday written Hebrew omits vowel markers (nikud), writing only consonants. Deaf patients who use written backup notes during an appointment receive consonant-only text that requires active vowel inference. A medical instruction written hastily in Hebrew as 'פעמים ביום' (three times a day, without vowels) requires literacy knowledge to decode correctly — a literacy gap that compounds when the patient is already navigating hearing impairment.

Pronunciation variation

  • Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, and Yemenite Hebrew differ phonologically
  • Modern Israeli Hebrew standardised around a Sephardic/Mizrahi-influenced phonology, but doctors trained in different communities, or older clinicians, may retain Ashkenazi or Yemenite phonological features — particularly in vowel quality and consonant realisation. A deaf patient who lip-reads one community's Hebrew may find a doctor from another background producing different mouth shapes for the same words.

Fast informal registers

  • Casual Israeli Hebrew compresses and elides in conversation
  • Formal Hebrew and conversational Israeli Hebrew differ substantially in speech rate and phonological reduction. In casual post-diagnosis conversation — the part where the doctor explains next steps informally — speech rates increase, consonants merge across word boundaries, and unstressed syllables reduce. The gap between the formal clinical vocabulary and the casual register for aftercare instructions is wide in Hebrew, and both are hard to lip-read.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss in Israel: legal rights, real gaps, and forty-five hours a year

Approximately 10,000 people in Israel are profoundly deaf, with a further 150,000 to 200,000 hard of hearing — roughly 2% of the total population. Israeli Sign Language (ISL) has gained significant formal recognition in recent years: in 2021, Shirly Pinto became the Knesset's first-ever deaf lawmaker, delivering her first speech in ISL and drawing national attention to the deaf community's standing. The Israeli Academy of the Hebrew Language formally recognised ISL as a real and legitimate language. These symbolic milestones reflect genuine progress in legal recognition, but formal recognition does not translate automatically into interpreter availability at the point where it matters most: the clinic.

Israel's Equal Rights for People with Disabilities Law guarantees equal access to public services, employment, and daily life for deaf and hard of hearing people. In practice, communication assistance for deaf Israelis is means-tested and quota-limited. Those who qualify receive up to 45 hours of ISL interpretation per year — less than an hour per week — to cover every appointment, legal matter, government service, and workplace interaction they need. A person managing a chronic condition that requires regular GP visits, specialist appointments, and pharmacy consultations can exhaust this annual quota in a single quarter.

For deaf and hard of hearing Israelis who do not meet the qualification threshold for state-funded interpretation, or who have used their annual allocation, healthcare appointments proceed without communication support. The result — as in many countries with legally robust but practically constrained accessibility frameworks — is that patients nod, guess, and ask family members to attend and interpret. Clinical accuracy suffers, medication errors follow, and follow-up care is missed. Captio AI captions Hebrew in real time at any kupat holim or hospital, so every appointment is fully accessible without waiting for a quota to refill or an interpreter to become available.

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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 doctor at Maccabi speaks fast Israeli Hebrew — the informal conversational register after the formal diagnosis. The guttural sounds are completely invisible on his lips. Captio AI captions everything in real time and I understand the aftercare instructions, not a guess at them."

מיכל לוי 🇮🇱
michal.l***@gmail.com
Severe sensorineural hearing loss, Tel Aviv

"My specialist at Hadassah uses formal clinical Hebrew — long sentences with root-derived medical terms. My cochlear implant doesn't always catch the word boundaries. Captio AI captions the full consultation and I leave with a complete picture."

דוד כהן 🇮🇱
david.k***@gmail.com
Profound deafness, cochlear implant, Jerusalem

"My annual interpreter allocation ran out in May. Captio AI means I can go to every appointment without counting my remaining hours. At the Clalit clinic in Haifa I read every word of the consultation in real time."

נועה שפירו 🇮🇱
noa.sh***@gmail.com
Moderate bilateral hearing loss, Haifa

"The pharmacist at the בית מרקחת in Beer Sheva speaks very fast and the Hebrew runs together. I couldn't follow the contraindications. With Captio AI I read the entire explanation as captions and I know exactly which combinations to avoid."

יוסף אבוטבול 🇮🇱
yosef.a***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Beer Sheva

"My doctor at Maccabi speaks fast Israeli Hebrew — the informal conversational register after the formal diagnosis. The guttural sounds are completely invisible on his lips. Captio AI captions everything in real time and I understand the aftercare instructions, not a guess at them."

מיכל לוי 🇮🇱
michal.l***@gmail.com
Severe sensorineural hearing loss, Tel Aviv

"My specialist at Hadassah uses formal clinical Hebrew — long sentences with root-derived medical terms. My cochlear implant doesn't always catch the word boundaries. Captio AI captions the full consultation and I leave with a complete picture."

דוד כהן 🇮🇱
david.k***@gmail.com
Profound deafness, cochlear implant, Jerusalem

"My annual interpreter allocation ran out in May. Captio AI means I can go to every appointment without counting my remaining hours. At the Clalit clinic in Haifa I read every word of the consultation in real time."

נועה שפירו 🇮🇱
noa.sh***@gmail.com
Moderate bilateral hearing loss, Haifa

"The pharmacist at the בית מרקחת in Beer Sheva speaks very fast and the Hebrew runs together. I couldn't follow the contraindications. With Captio AI I read the entire explanation as captions and I know exactly which combinations to avoid."

יוסף אבוטבול 🇮🇱
yosef.a***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Beer Sheva

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Understand your diagnosis in Hebrew.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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