Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Russian 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 Moscow, St Petersburg, or Novosibirsk office — an interviewer speaking corporate Russian at professional pace. Captio AI captions every question in real time so you read the full sentence before responding.

💻Video interviews

Zoom or VK Teams — standard for remote first rounds at Russian companies. Open Captio AI, put the call on speaker, and follow every question as it is asked.

📞Phone screens and initial calls

The initial HR screening call in Russian — fast, formal, over a mobile line. Captio AI captions the recruiter's voice in real time so compressed audio does not become the barrier.

👥Panel interviews

Panel interviews at large Russian companies or state enterprises. Captio AI follows each panelist's question in real time, even when multiple people speak in quick succession.

🌍International and foreign-language interviews

For roles at international firms in Russia where the interview shifts between Russian and English. Live Translator handles both languages in the same session without manual switching.

🎯Assessment centres

Assessment exercises and competency interviews — used at major Russian employers and state-sector hiring. Captio AI covers facilitator instructions, group exercises, and evaluator feedback in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Russian
93.8%

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.

Russian

Why Russian is hard to understand

Unstressed vowel reduction

  • Russian compresses unstressed syllables to near-silence
  • In Russian, unstressed vowels reduce dramatically: /o/ and /a/ collapse to /ʌ/ or /ə/, /e/ and /i/ merge centrally. A word like 'молоко' (milk) is pronounced roughly [mɐlɐˈko] — two of the three o's have vanished. In a formal interview, a fast sentence contains far more unstressed syllables than stressed ones, leaving a lip-reader watching a sequence of minimal mouth movements with occasional clear syllables.

Palatalization pairs

  • Every Russian consonant has a hard and soft version — both invisible
  • Russian distinguishes palatalized ('soft') consonants from non-palatalized ('hard') ones for every consonant in the language: б/бь, т/ть, н/нь, and so on. Palatalization is produced by raising the tongue toward the hard palate — inside the mouth, invisible on the lips. In interview vocabulary, these distinctions carry meaning and are systematically invisible to a lip-reader.

Consonant cluster reduction

  • Complex clusters simplify in fast formal speech
  • Russian permits consonant clusters that are unusual in European languages (встретить, здравствуйте) and reduces them further in fast speech. In a professional interview, clusters that are already difficult to parse from lip shapes reduce further, making word boundaries harder to track.

Formal register density

  • Russian corporate vocabulary draws on longer, less familiar word roots
  • Russian official and corporate register uses longer Latinate and Slavonic roots with more unstressed syllables than colloquial speech. A question that would be short in everyday Russian becomes longer and denser in formal interview register — increasing the proportion of invisible unstressed syllables per sentence.

Regional variation

  • Moscow prestige form differs from Ural, Siberian, and Southern Russian
  • Standard Muscovite Russian is the prestige interview variety, but interviewers across Russia's vast geography speak with Ural, Siberian, Southern, and St Petersburg phonological influences. Vowel reduction patterns and consonant preferences differ by region. A deaf candidate trained on one regional variety faces a different system in another.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
The Challenge

Russia's labour shortage is opening doors — but accessibility barriers remain for deaf workers

Russia is experiencing a significant labour shortage driven by demographic change, economic restructuring, and military mobilisation. A 2024 Meduza investigation found that vacancies in transportation and logistics grew by a third from 2023 to 2024, and the number of employers willing to hire individuals with disabilities for retail and service positions more than doubled over the same period. On paper, this represents an opportunity for deaf and hard of hearing workers. In practice, deep-seated accessibility issues continue to undermine hiring inclusion for deaf candidates — the same report found that while employer willingness was increasing, the structural capacity to accommodate deaf workers was not keeping pace.

Russia lacks a national captioning standard for the workplace. Sign language interpretation services are concentrated in major cities; outside Moscow and St Petersburg, interpreter access for job interviews is limited or unavailable. Russian disability legislation provides general employment protections under the Federal Law on Social Protection of Persons with Disabilities, but reasonable accommodation requirements for the interview stage are not consistently enforced, and awareness among HR departments is low. A deaf candidate applying for roles in Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, or Kazan is unlikely to be offered captioning or interpretation at the interview stage.

The linguistic barrier reinforces the structural one. Russian's heavy vowel reduction and palatalization system make it one of the more demanding European languages for lip-readers. An interview conducted entirely in fast formal Russian, without any visual support, places a deaf candidate at a severe disadvantage relative to hearing peers — regardless of qualifications. Captio AI works without any employer arrangement: open the app at the start of the interview, place the phone on the desk, and every Russian sentence appears 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

"Russian HR interviews are formal, fast, and assume you can hear. I put Captio AI on the desk at the start. Every question appeared immediately. I gave complete answers to every question and got through to the technical round."

Dmitri V. 🇷🇺
dmitri.v***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, Moscow

"The panel had people from two different cities speaking slightly different Russian. Captio AI followed both without any gaps. I knew every question from every panelist and answered each one directly."

Natasha B. 🇷🇺
natasha.b***@gmail.com
Sensorineural hearing loss since birth, St Petersburg

"There are no interpreter services where I live. I have always had to manage interviews without any support. Captio AI gave me the same access I would have had with an interpreter, without needing to arrange anything in advance."

Aleksei M. 🇷🇺
aleksei.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Novosibirsk

"The phone screen was the format I could never get through. Fast Russian on a mobile line with no video. Captio AI captioned every word. I stopped guessing and started answering. I made it to the next round."

Elena K. 🇷🇺
elena.k***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Yekaterinburg

"Russian HR interviews are formal, fast, and assume you can hear. I put Captio AI on the desk at the start. Every question appeared immediately. I gave complete answers to every question and got through to the technical round."

Dmitri V. 🇷🇺
dmitri.v***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, Moscow

"The panel had people from two different cities speaking slightly different Russian. Captio AI followed both without any gaps. I knew every question from every panelist and answered each one directly."

Natasha B. 🇷🇺
natasha.b***@gmail.com
Sensorineural hearing loss since birth, St Petersburg

"There are no interpreter services where I live. I have always had to manage interviews without any support. Captio AI gave me the same access I would have had with an interpreter, without needing to arrange anything in advance."

Aleksei M. 🇷🇺
aleksei.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Novosibirsk

"The phone screen was the format I could never get through. Fast Russian on a mobile line with no video. Captio AI captioned every word. I stopped guessing and started answering. I made it to the next round."

Elena K. 🇷🇺
elena.k***@gmail.com
Progressive hearing loss, Yekaterinburg

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Hear every question in Russian.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store