Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Bengali live captions and productivity tool for job interviews

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.

👔In-person interviews

In a Dhaka or Kolkata office — an interviewer speaking formal Bengali at professional pace. Captio AI captions every question in real time so you read the full sentence before responding.

💻Video interviews

Google Meet or Zoom in Bengali corporate environments — at Dhaka-based garment companies, NGOs, banking firms, or IT companies. Follow every question in real time without asking for repeats.

📞Phone screens and initial calls

Initial HR screening calls in Bengali — fast formal speech over a mobile line. Captio AI captions the recruiter's voice in real time so compressed audio does not become the barrier to the next round.

👥Panel interviews

Panel interviews at large Bangladeshi or West Bengali employers. Captio AI follows each panelist's question even when they switch between Bengali and English mid-conversation.

🌍International and foreign-language interviews

For roles at international NGOs or multinational companies in Bangladesh where interviews may mix Bengali and English. Live Translator handles both in the same session without manual switching.

🎯Assessment centres

Group discussion rounds at competitive Bangladeshi and Indian employers — common in banking, civil service, and management graduate hiring. Captio AI covers facilitator instructions and participant contributions in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Bengali
93.7%

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 room where a missed word has real consequences

Read the full question before you answer

Every word appears on screen as the interviewer speaks. You read the question completely before responding — nothing guessed, nothing reconstructed.

Works in person and on any call format

In-person interviews, video calls, phone screens. Place the phone on the table or point it toward the audio — Captio AI handles every format.

Discreet by design

The app runs quietly on your phone. Place it on the table or hold it naturally. No explanation needed, no drawing attention to the accommodation.

No asking for repeats

Asking an interviewer to repeat a question signals uncertainty. Captio AI means you never need to — you read it in real time and answer with confidence.

Any language

For international roles, multilingual panels, or interviews conducted in a second language. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so language is never the barrier.

Private by default

Interview conversations are sensitive. Captio AI processes audio in real time and discards it immediately — nothing is stored, nothing is shared.

Bengali

Why Bengali is hard to understand

Retroflex-dental collision

  • ট/ঠ/ড/ঢ and ত/থ/দ/ধ are visually identical in interview speech
  • Bengali contrasts retroflex consonants (ট, ঠ, ড, ঢ — tongue curled to hard palate) with dental consonants (ত, থ, দ, ধ — tongue at teeth). These two sets sound categorically different but look nearly identical on the lips. In a formal interview question, a deaf candidate watching the interviewer cannot distinguish words that differ only in this contrast.

Nasal vowel gap

  • Kolkata and Dhaka nasal vowels diverge silently
  • Standard Kolkata Bengali uses nasal vowels that carry meaning — oral and nasal vowels are distinct phonemes. Bangladeshi Standard (Dhaka) Bengali largely lacks this contrast due to Eastern dialect influence. An interviewer from West Bengal and one from Dhaka produce different phonological signals that look identical on the lips, creating comprehension gaps for a deaf candidate from either city watching the other.

Formal register divergence

  • Shadhubhasha vocabulary in formal interviews is invisible without context
  • Formal written and interview Bengali — Shadhubhasha — uses Sanskritic and Perso-Arabic vocabulary absent from everyday Cholita Bengali speech. Corporate and government interviews in Dhaka and Kolkata draw on this register. For a deaf candidate whose visual vocabulary is built around everyday conversational Bengali, formal interview vocabulary presents an unfamiliar set of lip patterns.

Bengali-English code-switching

  • Corporate interviews mix Bengali and English unpredictably
  • Bangladeshi and Indian corporate interviews — in banking, NGO, IT, and management roles — routinely switch between Bengali and English mid-sentence. A deaf candidate tracking Bengali may suddenly be watching an English phrase they were not expecting, with no visible signal of the language shift.

Dhaka-Kolkata register gap

  • Two standard varieties, two sets of lip patterns
  • Bangladeshi Standard Bengali and West Bengali Standard Bengali differ in vocabulary, grammar, and phonology. An interview in Dhaka and an interview in Kolkata are linguistically similar but not identical. Regional consonant assimilation patterns and lexical preferences differ in ways that add up in a fast interview setting.

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The Challenge

Disability employment in Bangladesh: millions affected, systems barely started

Bangladesh's 2022 Labour Force Survey incorporated disability indicators for the first time — a recognition that systematic data on disabled workers had been absent from the country's employment reporting. The initial findings confirmed what disability advocates had long observed: only one-third of working-age people with disabilities in Bangladesh are employed, with a marked gender disparity favouring men. Late identification of hearing loss — driven by limited neonatal screening outside Dhaka and a shortage of audiologists — means many deaf and hard of hearing children enter school without timely support, leading to educational gaps that compound employment disadvantage before the interview stage is ever reached.

The interview format in Bangladesh — for competitive positions in banking, government service, NGOs, and corporate employers — is formal, fast, and conducted entirely in spoken Bengali or a Bengali-English mix. No legal standard requires employers to provide captioning or sign language interpretation at the interview stage. Disclosing a hearing disability before an interview can introduce bias at the shortlisting stage. Not disclosing and struggling in the room produces a different, equally damaging outcome. The systems that should bridge this gap — subsidised interpreter services, employer accommodation mandates — are nascent or absent.

In West Bengal, India's Bengali-speaking state, the picture is shaped by India's RPWD Act 2016, which mandates reasonable accommodations in employment. But as with national policy, implementation in practice is inconsistent — particularly for private-sector interviews, where legal requirements are rarely enforced and awareness among hiring managers is low. Across both Bangladesh and West Bengal, the structural reality is the same: a deaf or hard of hearing Bengali-speaking candidate enters a job interview in a system that was designed without them in mind. Captio AI requires no employer arrangement — open the app, place the phone on the desk, and read every Bengali question as it is asked.

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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 banking interview was fast formal Bengali that switched to English for the technical questions. I had Captio AI on the desk. I read every question clearly. I passed all three rounds."

Tasnim R. 🇧🇩
tasnim.r***@gmail.com
Moderate sensorineural hearing loss, Dhaka

"Kolkata corporate interviews use Shadhubhasha vocabulary I had never seen in everyday conversation. Captio AI gave me every word. Knowing exactly what was asked meant I gave exactly the right answer."

Arnab D. 🇮🇳
arnab.d***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing since childhood, Kolkata

"The NGO group discussion round had six candidates speaking at once in Bengali and English. Captio AI tracked whoever was talking. I contributed to every part of the discussion and came out of the room confident."

Sadia I. 🇧🇩
sadia.i***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Dhaka

"The phone screen was in Bengali and I caught almost nothing. After that I used Captio AI for every interview. The difference was complete — I went from missing questions to answering all of them."

Partha S. 🇮🇳
partha.s***@gmail.com
Deaf since birth, Kolkata

"The banking interview was fast formal Bengali that switched to English for the technical questions. I had Captio AI on the desk. I read every question clearly. I passed all three rounds."

Tasnim R. 🇧🇩
tasnim.r***@gmail.com
Moderate sensorineural hearing loss, Dhaka

"Kolkata corporate interviews use Shadhubhasha vocabulary I had never seen in everyday conversation. Captio AI gave me every word. Knowing exactly what was asked meant I gave exactly the right answer."

Arnab D. 🇮🇳
arnab.d***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing since childhood, Kolkata

"The NGO group discussion round had six candidates speaking at once in Bengali and English. Captio AI tracked whoever was talking. I contributed to every part of the discussion and came out of the room confident."

Sadia I. 🇧🇩
sadia.i***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Dhaka

"The phone screen was in Bengali and I caught almost nothing. After that I used Captio AI for every interview. The difference was complete — I went from missing questions to answering all of them."

Partha S. 🇮🇳
partha.s***@gmail.com
Deaf since birth, Kolkata

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Hear every question in Bengali.

Captio AI is free to start

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