Romanian live captions and productivity tool for job interviews

Approximately 1 in every 20 people in Romania holds a disability certificate as of June 2023 — nearly 900,000 individuals. A World Bank disability-inclusive social protection brief for Romania (December 2023) noted that labour market integration for disabled Romanians had been declining relative to other groups, with many relying on disability compensation benefits. Romania's National Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2022–2027 acknowledges these employment gaps and commits to structural improvements, but implementation remains at an early stage.

Romania has undergone rapid economic transformation since EU accession, with a growing IT, automotive, and business process outsourcing sector. The interview formats at major Bucharest employers — multinational corporations, Romanian banks, IT firms, and state enterprises — are structured verbal processes without standard captioning. The EU Disability Forum has found that across Europe, the majority of persons with disabilities remain locked out of quality employment, with the interview stage consistently identified as a point of disproportionate exclusion.

Romanian's specific phonological characteristics compound the access gap. The unique vowels ă and â/î are found in few other European languages and have no equivalent visual reference for a lip-reader from outside Romania. Ş and ţ look like more common consonants on the lips. Regional accent variation across Bucharest, Cluj, and Iași means a deaf candidate faces different lip shapes depending on where the interviewer is from. Captio AI requires no employer arrangement: open the app, place the phone on the desk, and every Romanian sentence — unique vowels and all — is available in real time.