Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Greek live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations

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.

🏪Counter conversations

Φαρμακείο counter, ΕΛ.ΤΑ. window, supermarket checkout, ΚΕΠ desk. Staff speak fast in Greek and move to the next person. Captio AI shows what they said before the moment passes.

🍽️Group conversations

Sunday family lunch, name day celebration, neighbourhood gathering at the taverna. Multiple generations, fast overlapping Greek, regional accents mixing. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking.

👋Talking to strangers

Asking for directions in the city, chatting with a neighbour in the πολυκατοικία, meeting someone at the λαϊκή αγορά. People who speak at full pace. Captio AI captions anyone near you.

Informal work moments

Coffee break conversation, a quick question in the διάδρομο, catch-up before a meeting. The moments Greek workplaces run on. Captio AI keeps you in those conversations.

📋Appointments and admin

Ιατρείο reception, ΚΕΠ counter, bank branch, ΕΥΔΑΠ office. Formal vocabulary, fast delivery, no repeat expected. Captio AI transcribes everything said.

🚉Getting around

Metro and bus announcements, asking at a σταθμό, taxi driver conversation. Situations where you need to understand the first time. Captio AI covers you anywhere.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Greek
92.6%

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 conversations that don't wait

Captions as they speak, not after

Captio AI shows each word as it is spoken. You read what the person is saying while they are still saying it — not after they have finished and moved on.

No lip reading needed

You do not need to face the speaker or position yourself to see their mouth. Captio AI picks up speech from any direction — across a counter, at a table, in a busy street.

Works through background noise

Restaurants, pharmacies, busy streets, crowded waiting rooms. Captio AI separates speech from background noise so captions stay accurate where everyday conversations actually happen.

Follows any conversation

One person or six. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking at any moment — so you follow the thread at a dinner table or keep up with a counter exchange without losing track.

Any accent, any pace

People do not slow down or enunciate for you. Captio AI handles fast talkers, regional accents, and casual speech — the way people actually talk in real life.

Any language, no setup

When someone speaks a language you do not know, switch to Live Translator. They speak their language — you read in yours. No configuration needed. Works in 60+ languages.

Greek

Why Greek is hard to understand

Economic crisis cut support

  • Greek government grants for sign language interpretation were cut sharply after the economic crisis
  • Before the Greek economic crisis, government grants funded Greek Sign Language (GSL) interpretation in various settings. Those grants were significantly reduced in the following decade. Deaf Greeks now navigate a situation where the law formally recognises their language but the practical funding to use it in everyday life was removed. For a deaf Greek, the informal conversation at a kafeneio or laiki agora carries the same cost as a formal medical appointment — but without even the formal entitlement.

Kafeneio culture

  • Greek social life revolves around the kafeneio — a setting built on loud, fast, overlapping conversation
  • The traditional Greek kafeneio (coffee house) is not just a place to drink coffee. It is where news travels, where opinions form, where community gathers. Conversation in a kafeneio is heated, rapid, and overlapping — often many people speaking simultaneously at high volume. For a deaf or hard of hearing Greek person, the kafeneio represents social exclusion from the institution that defines Greek public life.

Formal versus demotic Greek

  • Modern Greek has a wide register gap between formal written language and fast everyday speech
  • Modern Greek has a significant gap between formal katharevousa-influenced written register and the fast demotic speech of everyday Athens or island life. A deaf person who has practiced lip-reading in formal Greek contexts encounters a different phonological system in fast street conversation. The speed and vowel reduction of colloquial Greek makes lip-reading considerably harder than the formal register suggests.

Island and regional accents

  • Cretan, Rhodian, Cypriot, and northern Greek accents differ substantially from Athenian Greek
  • Greek has strong regional accent variation. Cretan Greek, Rhodian Greek, northern Greek (Macedonian region), and Cypriot Greek all produce sounds and intonation patterns significantly different from standard Athenian Greek. A deaf person who has learned to lip-read in Athens will struggle considerably when family or visitors come from a different region.

Health policy exclusion

  • Research finds deaf Greeks are systematically excluded from health policy — and everyday settings follow the same pattern
  • A 2018 cross-sectional study published in Archives of Public Health found that 93% of deaf and 77.8% of hard of hearing Greek adults reported barriers in accessing healthcare. Researchers noted that people with hearing disabilities are systematically excluded from health policy planning in Greece. This pattern of institutional invisibility extends to every everyday setting — the market, the taverna, the neighbourhood.

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The Challenge

Deaf Greeks systematically excluded from health policy. Economic crisis removed interpreter grants. No captions at the kafeneio, the laiki agora, or the taverna.

Greece does not produce national hearing loss prevalence estimates, according to the European Commission's country literature review on hearing loss — people with hearing disabilities are systematically excluded from health policy and planning processes in Greece. Research conducted in Attica studied 140 adults with hearing loss (86 deaf and 54 hard of hearing), finding significantly poorer health outcomes and quality of life compared to hearing peers. In daily life, deaf and hard of hearing Greeks navigate a culture built on public oral life: the kafeneio debate, the laiki agora negotiation, the taverna meal, the neighbourhood exchange — all intensely social and all entirely without captioning or sign language infrastructure.

Greek Sign Language was officially recognised in 2000 — one of Europe's earlier national recognitions. But the economic crisis of the following decade cut government grants for GSL interpretation sharply, leaving a gap between legal recognition and practical access. A ResearchGate study documented that 93% of deaf Greek adults reported barriers accessing healthcare — reflecting a broader pattern of exclusion that runs through every public setting. Outside formal medical or legal contexts, a deaf Greek arranging everyday daily life has no entitlement to interpretation and no infrastructure to rely on.

The social concentration of Greek life in kafeneio and taverna settings — settings with very high background noise, fast overlapping speech, and strong regional accent variation — means that the acoustic barriers are compounded by cultural ones. A hard of hearing Greek who withdraws from the kafeneio withdraws from the primary vehicle of Greek civic and social life. That withdrawal is not a choice; it is the consequence of an accessibility gap that no existing tool has addressed. Captio AI captions Greek speech in real time — including fast demotic conversation and regional Greek accents — so the kafeneio, the market, and the taverna are settings you can be part of rather than watch from the outside.

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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

"The kafeneio in my neighbourhood is where everything happens. Before Captio AI it was noise I sat next to. Now I read the conversation. I actually belong at the table."

Eleni P. 🇬🇷
eleni.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Athens

"Northern Greek sounds different from Athens Greek. Captio AI handles both. Family visits from different regions are conversations I follow now."

Nikos K. 🇬🇷
nikos.k***@gmail.com
Deaf since birth, Thessaloniki

"Cretan Greek is fast and accented strongly. Captio AI captions it accurately. The laiki agora and the neighbourhood are places I navigate alone now."

Maria S. 🇬🇷
maria.s***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Heraklion, Crete

"The taverna was always a meal I watched rather than participated in. Captio AI transcribes the table conversation. Family dinners are different now."

Dimitris A. 🇬🇷
dimitris.a***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Patras

"The kafeneio in my neighbourhood is where everything happens. Before Captio AI it was noise I sat next to. Now I read the conversation. I actually belong at the table."

Eleni P. 🇬🇷
eleni.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Athens

"Northern Greek sounds different from Athens Greek. Captio AI handles both. Family visits from different regions are conversations I follow now."

Nikos K. 🇬🇷
nikos.k***@gmail.com
Deaf since birth, Thessaloniki

"Cretan Greek is fast and accented strongly. Captio AI captions it accurately. The laiki agora and the neighbourhood are places I navigate alone now."

Maria S. 🇬🇷
maria.s***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Heraklion, Crete

"The taverna was always a meal I watched rather than participated in. Captio AI transcribes the table conversation. Family dinners are different now."

Dimitris A. 🇬🇷
dimitris.a***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Patras

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Follow any conversation in Greek.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store