Urdu live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations

Pakistan has approximately 10 million deaf and hard of hearing people — 4.8% of the national population — according to government health data. For deaf Urdu speakers, exclusion from daily life begins immediately: the kiryana shop where the shopkeeper doesn't have time to repeat, the joint family household where multiple conversations happen in multiple languages at once, the bazaar where transactions are entirely verbal and entirely fast. These are not formal or institutional settings. They are the ordinary commercial and social fabric of Pakistani daily life.

Less than 5% of deaf children in Pakistan attend school, according to the Borgen Project's research on the Pakistani deaf community. Pakistani Sign Language has not been normalised in public life. Government offices, transport, markets, pharmacies, and public hospitals operate entirely without interpreter provision or captioning standards. The 2023 WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office study on hearing impairment in Pakistan documented the profound impact of communication barriers on families from early childhood through adulthood — barriers that the absence of any systematic support structure means are never resolved.

Pakistan's population is young and growing, but hearing loss rates are elevated by high prevalence of chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) — the leading cause of childhood deafness — and limited preventative healthcare reach in rural areas. The deaf and hard of hearing population is substantial and almost entirely unsupported in the settings of daily life. Captio AI captions Urdu speech in real time — including fast colloquial registers, Punjabi-Urdu mixing, and the urban Hinglish of Pakistani cities — so the bazaar, the family kitchen, and the transport ride are no longer settings you have to navigate alone.