Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Portuguese live captions and productivity tool for job interviews

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Captio AI app showing live captions

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

👔In-person interviews

In a São Paulo, Rio, or Lisbon office — an interviewer speaking at the pace of natural Brazilian or European Portuguese. Captio AI captions every question so you read it fully before responding.

💻Video interviews

Microsoft Teams or Zoom — standard in Brazilian and Portuguese companies for remote interviews. Open Captio AI, put the call on speaker, and follow every question in real time.

📞Phone screens and initial calls

The recruiter screening call in Portuguese — fast, with compressed audio that intensifies European Portuguese vowel reduction. Captio AI captions in real time so nothing is missed.

👥Panel interviews

Multiple interviewers at Brazilian or Portuguese employers — often from different regions, each with a different accent. Captio AI follows whoever is speaking and keeps you with every question.

🌍International and foreign-language interviews

For roles at multinational companies in Brazil or Portugal where the interview switches between Portuguese and English. Live Translator handles both languages in the same session.

🎯Assessment centres

Dynamic group exercises and presentations — common in Brazilian management consultancy and banking recruitment. Captio AI covers facilitator briefings and participant discussion throughout.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Portuguese
95.2%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
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.

Portuguese

Why Portuguese is hard to understand

European vowel reduction

  • Portuguese vowels almost disappear in a Lisbon interview room
  • European Portuguese reduces unstressed vowels dramatically — they become near-inaudible schwas or disappear entirely in natural speech. 'Restaurante' sounds closer to 'rstrant'. In a Lisbon or Porto interview, unstressed syllables compress to near-nothing, leaving a lip-reader with large gaps where vowels were. European Portuguese sounds faster than it reads.

EP vs BP divergence

  • European and Brazilian Portuguese are phonologically distant varieties
  • European Portuguese (Lisbon/Porto) and Brazilian Portuguese (São Paulo/Rio) sound substantially different — different vowel systems, different prosody, different consonant reduction patterns. A deaf candidate familiar with one variety faces a near-novel phonological system when interviewing in the other. For multinational employers with European and Brazilian offices, this gap is a real interview barrier.

Fast prosody

  • EP is among the fastest-sounding languages in Europe
  • European Portuguese is a stress-timed language where unstressed syllables are heavily compressed. This makes EP feel extremely fast to any listener, and makes lip-reading an EP interviewer in Lisbon particularly difficult — the mouth produces minimal movement for large stretches of a sentence.

Carioca vs Paulistano

  • Brazilian regional varieties differ within Brazil
  • Brazilian Portuguese itself is not monolithic. Rio de Janeiro (carioca) Portuguese has distinct vowel quality and consonant patterns compared to São Paulo (paulistano) speech. In a São Paulo interview, the palatalization of /t/ and /d/ before /i/ is a distinct feature. An interviewer from Rio and one from São Paulo produce different lip shapes for the same words.

Final consonant reduction

  • Word endings collapse in fast interview speech
  • Both EP and BP reduce and delete word-final consonants in fast connected speech. Plurals, verb endings, and grammatical markers at the ends of words reduce or disappear. In a fast interview question in Lisbon or São Paulo, the grammatical structure at the end of each word becomes invisible on the lips.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
The Challenge

2.3 million Brazilians unable to hear — and an employment gap that spans both sides of the Atlantic

Brazil's 2019 National Health Survey (PNS) found 2.3 million Brazilians had extreme difficulty hearing or were completely unable to hear — and the broader hearing-impaired population is significantly larger. Of those with hearing impairment, only 25.4% were in employment, compared to 66.3% of non-disabled working-age Brazilians. LIBRAS — Língua Brasileira de Sinais — was recognized as an official communication medium by Law 10.436 in 2002, a significant legal milestone. But recognition in law has not translated into consistent interview accommodation. Employers in Brazil are not required to provide captioning or a LIBRAS interpreter for the interview stage, and disclosure at the application stage can introduce bias before a candidate's qualifications are assessed.

In Portugal, hearing disability employment data is less systematically tracked, but the patterns follow those of other European countries where deaf employment rates are consistently lower than non-disabled employment rates. Portuguese employment law is shaped by European frameworks that mandate reasonable accommodation for disabled workers, but interview-stage implementation varies widely by employer size and sector. A deaf candidate attending a first-round interview at a Lisbon company faces the same unstructured spoken format as their Brazilian counterpart — fast European Portuguese, no captioning, no obligation on the employer to provide one.

Across both countries, the interview format is the access point where the gap is widest. Brazilian garment, agribusiness, banking, and tech sectors are growing employers — but their hiring processes are oral, fast-paced, and designed around hearing. For a deaf or hard of hearing candidate interviewing in São Paulo or Lisbon, the phonological demands of Portuguese compound the structural exclusion. Captio AI requires no employer arrangement — place the phone on the desk at the start of the interview, and every word in Brazilian or European Portuguese is available in real time.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
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

Download on theApp Store
Reviews

People love Captio AI

"The consulting firm interview was fast São Paulo Portuguese. I put Captio AI on the table and read every question as it was asked. I gave my best answers for the first time. I got through to the final round."

Beatriz C. 🇧🇷
beatriz.c***@gmail.com
Moderate sensorineural hearing loss, São Paulo

"European Portuguese vowel reduction made interviews in Lisbon almost impossible to follow. Captio AI captured every word including the ones that barely registered on the audio. I finally felt in control of the interview."

Tiago F. 🇵🇹
tiago.f***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Lisbon

"The video interview panel included someone from São Paulo and someone from Portugal. Two very different varieties of Portuguese. Captio AI followed both. I never lost the thread of a single question."

Luísa M. 🇧🇷
luisa.m***@gmail.com
Congenital hearing loss, Rio de Janeiro

"The bank phone screen was the hardest format — fast carioca Portuguese over a mobile line with no video. Captio AI captioned every word. I answered every question and progressed to the next stage."

André S. 🇧🇷
andre.s***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Belo Horizonte

"The consulting firm interview was fast São Paulo Portuguese. I put Captio AI on the table and read every question as it was asked. I gave my best answers for the first time. I got through to the final round."

Beatriz C. 🇧🇷
beatriz.c***@gmail.com
Moderate sensorineural hearing loss, São Paulo

"European Portuguese vowel reduction made interviews in Lisbon almost impossible to follow. Captio AI captured every word including the ones that barely registered on the audio. I finally felt in control of the interview."

Tiago F. 🇵🇹
tiago.f***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Lisbon

"The video interview panel included someone from São Paulo and someone from Portugal. Two very different varieties of Portuguese. Captio AI followed both. I never lost the thread of a single question."

Luísa M. 🇧🇷
luisa.m***@gmail.com
Congenital hearing loss, Rio de Janeiro

"The bank phone screen was the hardest format — fast carioca Portuguese over a mobile line with no video. Captio AI captioned every word. I answered every question and progressed to the next stage."

André S. 🇧🇷
andre.s***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Belo Horizonte

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Hear every question in Portuguese.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store