Afrikaans live captions and productivity tool for phone & video calls
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow Afrikaans phone & video calls
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Afrikaans speakers.
Follow the call in real time
- Captions appear word by word as the other person speaks
- Works on any call — no app integration required
- Put the call on speaker and point the microphone toward it
- Handles compressed call audio accurately
International and foreign-language calls
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- Translates in real time as they speak
- 60+ languages, no setup
- For family abroad, international business, or travel
Transcribe any call recording
- Record the call and upload for a complete written transcript
- Review instructions, information, and decisions after
- Organised by speaker
- Works on any call recording
Key information extracted from any call
- Important points pulled from any call transcript
- Useful for medical calls, customer service, and work calls
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
A catch-up call with family in the Western Cape, Gauteng, or the Northern Cape — talking in Afrikaans about the week's news at the relaxed pace of a home phone call.
A work call with Afrikaans-speaking colleagues or clients in Cape Town or Pretoria — professional Afrikaans in a business or farming sector context.
A callback from a GP surgery, a hospital in Stellenbosch, or a pharmacist in Paarl — healthcare calls where understanding every word about medication or results matters.
A call from Capitec, a municipality, or an insurance company — fast-talking agents in Afrikaans following a script, often with hold music between stages.
A call from an Afrikaans-speaking relative in the Netherlands, New Zealand, or the UK, mixing Afrikaans with English or Dutch mid-conversation.
A WhatsApp video call with Afrikaans family in the Western Cape — the platform of choice for South African families staying in touch across provinces or continents.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Built for the calls you have been avoiding
Captions as they speak
Words appear on screen word by word while the other person is still talking. You read what they say at the same pace everyone else hears it — no delay, no reconstruction.
Works on any call app
Captio AI does not need to integrate with any platform. Put the call on speaker, point the microphone toward the audio, and read the captions. It works the same way for any app on any device.
No more asking for repeats
Every word is on screen as it is said. If you missed something, glance at the caption rather than interrupting the call — the full sentence is there.
Handles call audio accurately
Compressed phone audio is less clean than in-person speech. Captio AI is built for real-world audio conditions, including the reduced quality of standard phone and VoIP calls.
Any language
For calls with family abroad, international colleagues, or foreign-language customer service. Live Translator captions and translates in real time with no manual setup.
Record and review after
Record any call and upload it to Audio Transcription. Get a full written record of everything said — useful for medical instructions, work decisions, and anything worth having in writing.
Why Afrikaans is hard to understand
Guttural /χ/ and /ɣ/
- The Afrikaans 'g' is produced entirely at the back of the throat
- Afrikaans 'g' is a velar fricative produced at the back of the throat. Words like 'goed', 'groot', and 'gebruik' open with a sound that leaves no visible trace on the lips. A lip-reader sees what looks like a word starting with a vowel.
Schwa reduction
- Unstressed vowels collapse in fast Cape Afrikaans
- In casual Cape Afrikaans, unstressed vowels reduce to a near-silent schwa and function words become murmurs. A sentence that looks distinct on paper becomes a blur of content words on the lips, with grammatical connectors invisible.
Kaapse Afrikaans dialect
- Cape Coloured Afrikaans has different vowel qualities and rhythm
- Kaapse Afrikaans — spoken by Cape Coloured communities in the Western Cape — uses different vowel qualities, a faster contracted rhythm, and some Arabic and Malay-derived vocabulary. On a phone call between different dialect speakers, lip-reading cues shift unpredictably.
Afrikaans-English code-switching
- English appears mid-sentence without pause or signal
- South African speakers switch between Afrikaans and English seamlessly — a pattern so pervasive it is unremarkable. A lip-reader tracking Afrikaans word shapes is suddenly presented with English phonology, then back again, with no visual marker indicating the switch.
Stop devoicing
- Voiced and voiceless stops share the same lip shape
- Voiced stops in Afrikaans devoice readily in running speech, and aspirated vs unaspirated distinctions vary across dialects. The acoustic cue that separates /b/ from /p/ disappears — and the lip shapes are already identical.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in South Africa reaches every community
Approximately 12 million South Africans live with hearing loss, with prevalence varying sharply by region: 12.35% in Cape Town, 17.5% in Tshwane primary health care settings, and up to 19.88% in rural Limpopo communities. The WHO estimates around 124,000 South Africans experience total hearing loss. Hearing impairment is the third most commonly reported disability in South Africa — after visual impairment and physical disability — yet audiological services remain concentrated in urban centres, leaving rural and peri-urban communities with severely limited access.
South African Sign Language (SASL) became the country's 12th official language in December 2023, a landmark recognition — but interpreter services remain critically underfunded. For Afrikaans-speaking deaf and hard of hearing people specifically, services in SASL or English may not reach speakers in smaller Western Cape towns, and phone and video calls with family or service providers remain largely inaccessible without a hearing intermediary.
Captio AI captions every Afrikaans phone call in real time — from a family catch-up in the Western Cape to a bank callback from Pretoria — so deaf and hard of hearing South Africans can follow every word independently.
[1]Africa Check — Do 20% of South Africa's population have hearing loss?
[2]PMC6306974 — Prevalence of hearing loss at primary health care clinics in South Africa
[3]NCPD — Prevalence and impact of hearing loss in South Africa
[4]GBD 2019 — Hearing loss prevalence and years lived with disability (PMC7960691)
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat 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.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"The GP surgery calls in Afrikaans and I couldn't follow the nurse speaking quickly about my results. With Captio AI I read the words as she speaks and don't need to call back to ask what she said."
"Capitec's call centre is fast and their Afrikaans is not always clear. Captio AI gives me the transcript and I handled a dispute with the bank myself for the first time."
"My family in Beaufort West switches between Afrikaans and English constantly on WhatsApp calls. Captio AI keeps up with both and I follow the whole call — not just the Afrikaans parts."
"I call my parents in the Northern Cape every week. They speak fast informal Afrikaans and I used to miss most of it. Captio AI captures it clearly and I feel like I'm back at the dinner table."
"The GP surgery calls in Afrikaans and I couldn't follow the nurse speaking quickly about my results. With Captio AI I read the words as she speaks and don't need to call back to ask what she said."
"Capitec's call centre is fast and their Afrikaans is not always clear. Captio AI gives me the transcript and I handled a dispute with the bank myself for the first time."
"My family in Beaufort West switches between Afrikaans and English constantly on WhatsApp calls. Captio AI keeps up with both and I follow the whole call — not just the Afrikaans parts."
"I call my parents in the Northern Cape every week. They speak fast informal Afrikaans and I used to miss most of it. Captio AI captures it clearly and I feel like I'm back at the dinner table."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow every call in Afrikaans.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store