Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Indonesian live captions and productivity tool for group settings

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.

🍽️Family dinners

A Lebaran (Idul Fitri) family gathering where relatives from different islands come home and each speaks Indonesian with a regional accent. Captio AI captions each speaker so you follow the celebration without asking for repeats.

🎉Social gatherings and parties

A family makan bersama (communal meal) where fast colloquial Indonesian replaces the standard language you learned and nobody slows down. Captio AI gives you real-time captions of every voice at the table.

Friend catch-ups

An arisan — the community savings and social gathering central to Indonesian neighbourhood life — where multiple members contribute quickly and the atmosphere is relaxed and fast. Captio AI captions each contributor.

🌍Multilingual groups

A multigenerational family gathering in Yogyakarta or Surabaya where Javanese and Indonesian mix as grandparents switch between languages. Captio AI follows the Indonesian throughout.

👥Community and club meetings

A weekend gathering with friends at a warung kopi or café in Jakarta where Jakarta colloquial Indonesian and English mix in the same conversation. Captio AI captions the full exchange.

🏠Shared living situations

A community event or neighbourhood meeting where multiple residents speak quickly in Indonesian with no formal captioning. Captio AI gives you a transcript of every contribution in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Indonesian
91.1%

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 to keep you in the conversation, not just in the room

Captions whoever is speaking

Captio AI follows the dominant voice at any moment — whoever is loudest in the microphone's direction. In a group conversation, this tracks the active speaker naturally.

Works through background noise

Restaurants, living rooms, parties, outdoor gatherings. Moderate background noise does not prevent accurate captions — Captio AI is built for real environments, not quiet rooms.

Place it in the centre and forget it

Put the phone on the table or in the middle of the group, microphone facing the conversation. No positioning it after every speaker change, no adjusting between voices.

Less effort, less fatigue

The cognitive load of following a group conversation by lip-reading and reconstructing speech is exhausting. Captio AI handles the following so you can direct your energy toward actually being in the conversation.

60+ languages

For multilingual families, mixed-language social groups, or gatherings where people switch between languages mid-conversation. No setup required between language changes.

No setup between conversations

Open the app and place the phone. No configuration per setting, no briefing the group, nothing to manage between conversations. It works for any group, in any situation.

Indonesian

Why Indonesian is hard to understand

Colloquial vs formal register

  • The Indonesian spoken at gatherings differs substantially from the standard form taught in school
  • Standard Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) as taught in education and broadcast in media differs substantially from the colloquial Indonesian of everyday social speech. In casual conversation, the me- verbal prefix is dropped ('makan' not 'memakan'), and suffixes -kan and -i shift to -in in Jakartan colloquial. A deaf person calibrated to formal Indonesian encounters a different morphological and phonological environment at every family gathering — and the colloquial is the only form anyone uses in a relaxed social setting.

Javanese phonological influence

  • Indonesia's largest language group shapes the Indonesian spoken across Central and East Java
  • With approximately 98 million native speakers, Javanese is Indonesia's largest language and heavily influences the Indonesian spoken across Central and East Java. Javanese-influenced Indonesian carries distinct vowel qualities, different prosodic rhythm, and frequent Javanese loanwords. For a deaf person whose Indonesian is calibrated to the Jakarta or standard variety, a family gathering in Surabaya or Yogyakarta presents a substantially different phonological landscape.

Jakarta colloquial (Betawi influence)

  • Jakarta's colloquial speech has spread nationwide as the informal urban standard
  • Jakarta's colloquial Indonesian, influenced by Betawi, has its own suffix patterns (-in instead of -kan), distinct vocabulary, and urban rhythm. In media, social media, and among younger Indonesians nationwide, Jakarta colloquial has become the de facto informal standard. A deaf person trained on formal Bahasa Indonesia encounters this register at almost every urban social gathering, and it differs significantly in morphology and vocabulary from the formal variety.

Indonesian-English mixing

  • Educated urban Indonesians shift between Indonesian and English mid-sentence
  • Educated urban Indonesians — particularly in Jakarta and Surabaya and among younger generations — mix Indonesian and English freely in social settings: 'Gue kemarin meeting sama dia, he's so weird.' The switch is unannounced and often carries specific content. For a deaf person tracking Indonesian, the English segment is an unannounced phonological shift that breaks the visual comprehension chain.

Regional language interference

  • Sundanese, Balinese, and Javanese phonology shapes Indonesian differently across Indonesia
  • In Sundanese-majority West Java, Balinese-majority Bali, and other regional language zones, Indonesian is spoken with strong regional phonological influence. Speakers may switch between Indonesian and their regional language at social gatherings — presenting a deaf person with phonological systems that change without announcement or signal, including the three speech levels of Javanese (ngoko, madya, krama) that affect the register of Indonesian when Javanese speakers are present.

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The Challenge

9 million with difficulty hearing. And Southeast Asia carries the world's second-largest hearing loss burden.

In 2015, Indonesia's Central Statistics Agency (BPS) found that almost nine million Indonesians over the age of 10 had difficulty hearing. WHO regional estimates place Southeast Asia as the second most affected region globally for hearing loss, with 109.5 million people across the region living with some degree of hearing impairment. A study published in PMC (2022) on hypertensive Indonesian adults found significant associations between hypertension and hearing problems, suggesting an additional burden from undiagnosed combined conditions in a middle-income health system with limited audiological infrastructure and low public awareness of hearing loss as a health issue.

Indonesia has no single nationally standardised sign language system. Indonesian Sign Language (BISINDO) — developed organically by the deaf community — coexists with the older SIBI system promoted in schools. Interpreter provision is minimal across the country. A national survey on community behaviour towards hearing loss found low public awareness of hearing conditions and limited uptake of hearing care, meaning many deaf and hard of hearing Indonesians navigate daily social life without any diagnosis or assistive technology. In informal social settings — the family gathering, the neighbourhood arisan, the Idul Fitri celebration — no formal communication support exists.

Captio AI captions Indonesian in real time — across Jakarta colloquial, Javanese-influenced varieties, and Indonesian-English code-switching — so the Lebaran gathering, the family makan bersama, and the neighbourhood arisan are conversations a deaf or hard of hearing Indonesian can follow without exhausting themselves lip-reading a language that changes register at every table.

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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

"Jakarta colloquial is nothing like standard Indonesian. Family gatherings are fast, loud, and everyone uses slang. Captio AI follows the real thing, not the textbook version."

Dewi S. 🇮🇩
dewi.s***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Jakarta

"Javanese-influenced Indonesian at my family's gatherings in Surabaya sounds completely different from what I learned. Captio AI captions it accurately. I follow conversations I used to just watch."

Budi R. 🇮🇩
budi.r***@gmail.com
Deaf since childhood, Surabaya

"My family switches between Javanese and Indonesian throughout every meal. Captio AI follows the Indonesian sections and I stay in the conversation even when Javanese appears."

Sari N. 🇮🇩
sari.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Yogyakarta

"Balinese Indonesian has its own phonology and I was struggling at every community gathering. Captio AI on the table means I follow the neighbourhood arisan properly for the first time."

Agung P. 🇮🇩
agung.p***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Bali

"Jakarta colloquial is nothing like standard Indonesian. Family gatherings are fast, loud, and everyone uses slang. Captio AI follows the real thing, not the textbook version."

Dewi S. 🇮🇩
dewi.s***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Jakarta

"Javanese-influenced Indonesian at my family's gatherings in Surabaya sounds completely different from what I learned. Captio AI captions it accurately. I follow conversations I used to just watch."

Budi R. 🇮🇩
budi.r***@gmail.com
Deaf since childhood, Surabaya

"My family switches between Javanese and Indonesian throughout every meal. Captio AI follows the Indonesian sections and I stay in the conversation even when Javanese appears."

Sari N. 🇮🇩
sari.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Yogyakarta

"Balinese Indonesian has its own phonology and I was struggling at every community gathering. Captio AI on the table means I follow the neighbourhood arisan properly for the first time."

Agung P. 🇮🇩
agung.p***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Bali

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Keep up with the group in Indonesian.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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