Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Telugu live captions and productivity tool for lectures

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.

🏛️Large lecture halls

Osmania University, Andhra University, JNTU Hyderabad, and SV University lecture halls. Telugu-medium lectures at academic pace, often with regional variety from the lecturer's background. Place the phone on the desk facing the PA system. Captio AI captions from any row.

🔬Seminars and tutorials

Telugu university seminars mixing Telugu and English in discussion. Students from coastal Andhra, Telangana, and Rayalaseema contributing with different regional varieties. Captio AI follows whoever is speaking.

💻Online and recorded lectures

Recorded lectures on university portals, YouTube academic channels, or WhatsApp shared recordings. Put the recording on speaker and point Captio AI at the audio for accurate captions.

📚Study groups

Study groups in Hyderabad or Vijayawada — fast conversational Telugu mixed with English. Captio AI follows whoever is explaining and handles Telugu-English mixing without switching.

🌍Foreign-language and international courses

Telugu students in English-medium programmes, or international students following Telugu-medium courses. Live Translator captions in real time so language is not the access barrier.

🎤Guest speakers and public talks

Visiting academics and guest speakers from different parts of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Captio AI handles coastal Andhra, Telangana, and Rayalaseema varieties — any speaker at any venue.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Telugu
91.8%

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 pace and pressure of a real lecture

Follow without splitting your attention

Lip-reading and note-taking at the same time is an impossible cognitive load. Captio AI handles the following so you can direct all your attention to understanding what is being said.

Captions while the lecturer is still speaking

Words appear on your screen as they are said — not after the sentence ends. You stay in sync with the lecture rather than always being a beat behind.

Works in any lecture setting

Lecture halls, seminar rooms, online classes, study groups. Place the phone on your desk, point it toward the audio source, and Captio AI handles the rest.

A full transcript to study from

Record the lecture and upload it to Audio Transcription after class. Get a complete written record you can search, annotate, and revise from — at your own pace.

60+ languages

For international students, students studying abroad, or courses taught in a second language. Captio AI captions or translates in real time with no manual setup.

No advance notice needed

Official university captioning requires booking in advance and is not available for every session. Captio AI works for any lecture, any time, with no prior arrangement.

Telugu

Why Telugu is hard to understand

Aspirated and retroflex grid

  • Telugu's 4-way stop contrast and retroflex series are entirely invisible on the lips
  • Telugu distinguishes voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiced unaspirated, and voiced aspirated stops — the same four-way grid as other South Asian languages. All four are produced with the same lip shape. Telugu also distinguishes a full retroflex series (ట, ఠ, డ, ఢ, ణ) from dental equivalents — a distinction produced inside the mouth with no visible lip movement. In a lecture, these contrasts appear in virtually every word.

Vowel length contrast

  • Telugu distinguishes 5 short and 5 long vowels — a contrast that produces almost no visible lip change
  • Telugu has a systematic short-long vowel contrast (a/ā, i/ī, u/ū, e/ē, o/ō). The duration difference is acoustically meaningful but visually negligible — lip position is effectively the same. In a lecture, this contrast changes word meaning (కల kala, moment vs. కాల kāla, time) with no visual marker. A deaf student cannot recover vowel length from lip-reading and must rely entirely on context.

Regional dialect divergence

  • Rayalaseema, Telangana, coastal Andhra, and Nellore Telugu all present different phonological profiles in the lecture hall
  • Telugu has distinct regional varieties: Guntur/Krishna coastal Andhra Telugu, Telangana Telugu (with Urdu substrate influence), Rayalaseema Telugu, and Nellore variety. Universities in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Tirupati, and Visakhapatnam draw faculty from different regional backgrounds. A deaf student calibrated to one variety encounters different lip patterns when the lecturer grew up speaking a different regional Telugu.

Sanskrit academic vocabulary

  • Telugu academic lectures use Sanskritic formal vocabulary that is phonologically remote from colloquial speech
  • Academic Telugu draws heavily on Sanskrit-derived vocabulary: విద్యాలయం (vidyālayam, school), పరీక్ష (parīksha, examination), శాస్త్రం (śāstram, science). These words have different phonological structures from everyday Telugu. A deaf student who lip-reads colloquial Telugu encounters different mouth shapes throughout an academic lecture.

Telugu-English code-switching

  • AP and Telangana university STEM lectures mix Telugu and English without visual warning
  • Universities in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, and Tirupati routinely switch between Telugu and English within STEM lectures. The phonological system and lip profile change each time. A deaf student must track two distinct systems simultaneously, with the switch typically occurring when the technical content is most important. Telugu-English mixing is particularly dense in engineering and computer science lectures at JNTU Hyderabad and IIT Tirupati.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — with no systematic university captioning provision

India has approximately 63 million people with significant auditory loss. A PMC study on disability estimates in India (PMC6730860) documented that existing national surveys systematically undercount hearing impairment — the actual prevalence is substantially higher than census figures suggest. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh together have a combined population of approximately 115 million. Community-based studies across India found hearing loss prevalence between 6% and 26.9% for all ages — implying millions of people in the Telugu-speaking states navigating daily life with some degree of hearing difficulty.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (RPDA) created a framework for educational inclusion in India, but implementation at the university level remains inconsistent. Indian Sign Language lacks official national recognition, and Telugu Sign Language provision at universities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana is ad hoc. A 2025 Springer Language Policy study confirmed that ISL speakers fall outside the formal language rights framework in India — meaning no mandate exists for sign language interpretation in ordinary university lectures. Students at Osmania University, JNTU Hyderabad, or Andhra University who need captioning or interpretation must negotiate individually with each faculty.

Research on school-level disability across India (PMC12199054) found that hearing impairment affected approximately 9.9% of school-age children across India's districts. For those students in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana who navigate school with hearing difficulty, the transition to university brings a sharp increase in academic language complexity — Sanskrit-heavy formal Telugu, Telugu-English code-switching, and fast regional delivery — with no corresponding increase in accessibility support.

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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

"My Osmania University professor lectures in Telangana Telugu with Urdu substrate influence. My lip-reading was calibrated to coastal Telugu. Captio AI handles both varieties accurately."

Kavya R. 🇮🇳
kavya.r***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hyderabad

"JNTU lectures mix Telugu and English constantly in engineering content. Captio AI handles both. I stopped guessing the technical terms and started understanding them."

Sai K. 🇮🇳
sai.k***@gmail.com
Deaf student, Vijayawada

"Rayalaseema Telugu has different vowel quality from standard. Captio AI captures it accurately. I follow SV University lectures completely for the first time."

Divya M. 🇮🇳
divya.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Tirupati

"Andhra University lectures are in coastal Telugu at academic pace. Captio AI keeps up with it. I take complete notes now — no gaps where I lost the thread."

Arjun N. 🇮🇳
arjun.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Visakhapatnam

"My Osmania University professor lectures in Telangana Telugu with Urdu substrate influence. My lip-reading was calibrated to coastal Telugu. Captio AI handles both varieties accurately."

Kavya R. 🇮🇳
kavya.r***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hyderabad

"JNTU lectures mix Telugu and English constantly in engineering content. Captio AI handles both. I stopped guessing the technical terms and started understanding them."

Sai K. 🇮🇳
sai.k***@gmail.com
Deaf student, Vijayawada

"Rayalaseema Telugu has different vowel quality from standard. Captio AI captures it accurately. I follow SV University lectures completely for the first time."

Divya M. 🇮🇳
divya.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Tirupati

"Andhra University lectures are in coastal Telugu at academic pace. Captio AI keeps up with it. I take complete notes now — no gaps where I lost the thread."

Arjun N. 🇮🇳
arjun.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Visakhapatnam

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Follow every lecture in Telugu.

Captio AI is free to start

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