Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Persian 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 Tehran, Isfahan, or Mashhad office — an interviewer speaking formal Farsi at professional pace. Captio AI captions every question in real time so you read the full sentence before responding.

💻Video interviews

Video interviews on Skype or Zoom — increasingly common for Iranian companies and diaspora employers. Put the call on speaker and follow every question in real time.

📞Phone screens and initial calls

The initial HR screening call in Farsi — fast, formal, often with Arabic-derived vocabulary. Captio AI captions the recruiter's voice in real time so nothing is lost.

👥Panel interviews

Panel interviews at Iranian companies, government institutions, or private firms. Captio AI follows each panelist in real time even when questions come quickly from different speakers.

🌍International and foreign-language interviews

For roles at international firms operating in Iran or for diaspora interviews where Persian and English alternate. Live Translator handles both languages in the same session.

🎯Assessment centres

Competency-based assessment formats and structured interviews — common at major Iranian public and private sector employers. Captio AI covers all facilitator speech and candidate interaction.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Persian
89.1%

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 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.

Persian

Why Persian is hard to understand

Uvular and pharyngeal sounds

  • ق and غ are produced deep in the throat — nothing on the lips
  • Persian has uvular and velar fricatives — qâf (ق /q/) a uvular stop, and ghain (غ /ɣ~ɢ/) a uvular fricative — produced by constricting the back of the throat, far behind the lips. In a formal Tehrani office interview, these consonants appear in common business vocabulary and produce no visible lip movement. A deaf candidate watching the interviewer cannot see the distinction between words that differ only in these back-throat consonants.

Formal register gap

  • Official and literary Farsi uses Arabic-derived vocabulary absent from everyday speech
  • Formal Persian used in government offices and corporate interview settings draws heavily on Arabic loanwords and literary vocabulary that differs from everyday colloquial Tehran Persian. A deaf candidate whose visual vocabulary comes from daily conversations faces an unfamiliar lexical set in a formal hiring context, where words look different on the lips because they are genuinely different words.

Short vowel invisibility

  • Persian's three short vowels are brief and compress in fast interview speech
  • Persian has only three short vowels (/a/, /e/, /o/) which are not written in the standard script and are extremely brief in natural connected speech. In a fast interview, these already-short vowels compress further, leaving long consonant sequences with minimal visible vowel movement between them.

Tehran vowel shift

  • Contemporary Tehran Persian has shifted vowels from classical forms
  • Modern Tehran colloquial Persian has shifted historical /â/ and /u/ toward different vowel qualities than literary pronunciation. A deaf candidate who has learned to lip-read formal literary Farsi may watch different vowel lip shapes from a Tehran interviewer using contemporary pronunciation — and vice versa.

Lip-reading research confirms difficulty

  • LRW-Persian research documents Persian visual speech as particularly challenging
  • The LRW-Persian dataset — the largest in-the-wild Persian lip-reading dataset — was developed specifically because Persian visual speech recognition is a documented challenge. Research on viseme detection in Persian confirms that the language's phonetic characteristics, particularly sounds produced deep in the throat, make Persian one of the harder languages for visual speech comprehension.

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The Challenge

Deaf Iranians face healthcare and employment barriers with no sign language interpreter provision

Iran's disability situation was documented in a January 2026 EUAA Country of Origin Information query which found that individuals with hearing loss in Iran reported the absence of sign language interpreters as a primary barrier to accessing basic services — including healthcare — independently. A Frontiers in Public Health study on sensorineural hearing loss in southwest Iran (2023) found significant socioeconomic inequalities associated with hearing loss, with lower education and income levels predicting both hearing loss incidence and reduced access to rehabilitation. A broader 2023 study in western Iran found high prevalence of mental disorders among adults with disabilities, driven in part by social exclusion and limited economic participation.

Iranian employment law includes provisions for disabled workers, and government employers are required to hire a proportion of workers with disabilities. In practice, the interview format at Iranian public-sector and private-sector employers is a formal spoken process in literary Farsi, conducted without captioning or sign language interpretation. No legal mechanism requires an employer to provide visual communication support at the interview stage. Requesting accommodation can expose a candidate to questions about their ability to perform the role, compounding the dilemma that exists in many countries between disclosure and silence.

The linguistic barrier is acute. Persian's formal interview register uses Arabic-derived vocabulary and literary forms distinct from everyday colloquial speech. Uvular and pharyngeal consonants produce no visible lip movement. Short vowels are brief and compress in fast speech. Research on Persian visual speech recognition confirms the language is among the harder ones for lip-reading. Captio AI processes Persian audio in real time — no lip-reading, no guessing, no missing the question — and requires no advance arrangement with the interviewer.

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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

"Formal Farsi interviews use Arabic-derived vocabulary I never encounter in everyday conversation. Captio AI gave me every word. I answered each question correctly for the first time."

Maryam R. 🇮🇷
maryam.r***@gmail.com
Moderate sensorineural hearing loss, Tehran

"The government interview panel spoke formal literary Farsi at speed. I had Captio AI on the desk. Every sentence appeared in full before I responded. I passed the written and oral rounds."

Dariush K. 🇮🇷
dariush.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing since childhood, Isfahan

"Persian phone interviews are impossible — no lip reading, fast formal speech. Captio AI captioned every word in real time. I went from failing every phone screen to passing consistently."

Sara H. 🇮🇷
sara.h***@gmail.com
Sensorineural hearing loss, Mashhad

"The diaspora company interview mixed Farsi and English. Captio AI followed both. I finally felt like an equal candidate rather than someone managing a deficit."

Ali N. 🇮🇷
ali.n***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Tehran

"Formal Farsi interviews use Arabic-derived vocabulary I never encounter in everyday conversation. Captio AI gave me every word. I answered each question correctly for the first time."

Maryam R. 🇮🇷
maryam.r***@gmail.com
Moderate sensorineural hearing loss, Tehran

"The government interview panel spoke formal literary Farsi at speed. I had Captio AI on the desk. Every sentence appeared in full before I responded. I passed the written and oral rounds."

Dariush K. 🇮🇷
dariush.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing since childhood, Isfahan

"Persian phone interviews are impossible — no lip reading, fast formal speech. Captio AI captioned every word in real time. I went from failing every phone screen to passing consistently."

Sara H. 🇮🇷
sara.h***@gmail.com
Sensorineural hearing loss, Mashhad

"The diaspora company interview mixed Farsi and English. Captio AI followed both. I finally felt like an equal candidate rather than someone managing a deficit."

Ali N. 🇮🇷
ali.n***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Tehran

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Hear every question in Persian.

Captio AI is free to start

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