Italian live captions and productivity tool for phone & video calls
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
Download for free
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Everything you need to follow Italian phone & video calls
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Italian 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 parents in Milan or a relative in Naples. Family conversations carry fast Italian with regional accents and geminate consonants. Captio AI captions everything said, at full speed.
A team call run in Italian from a Rome office or a Zoom meeting with Italian colleagues. Business Italian with English technical terms. Captio AI keeps pace with both.
A callback from an ASL (Azienda Sanitaria Locale) or a farmacia query in Italian. Medical calls use formal vocabulary at speed. Captio AI shows the full message — instructions, prescription, follow-up — in text.
An Intesa Sanpaolo automated IVR or a Poste Italiane customer service call in Italian. Automated menus give you one chance. Captio AI captions each option before the timeout.
A call from the Italian diaspora in Argentina, Germany, or the US. Diaspora Italian carries Spanish, German, or English influence on vocabulary and rhythm. Captio AI handles it accurately.
A WhatsApp video call with family in Palermo or a Teams meeting with a Roman team. All video call apps work the same way — put the call on speaker, open Captio AI, read the captions.
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 Italian is hard to understand
Geminate consonants are invisible
- Doubled consonants are the hardest feature to hear or see
- Italian distinguishes single from geminate consonants with phonemic force: pala (shovel) vs. palla (ball), nonno (grandfather) vs. nono (ninth). The difference is a longer consonant closure — entirely internal and invisible on lips. On a phone call without hearing, all geminate pairs collapse into their single-consonant counterparts, affecting a large part of everyday Italian vocabulary.
Open and close mid vowel pairs
- Four Italian vowel distinctions look identical on lips
- Standard Italian distinguishes open mid /ɛ, ɔ/ from close mid /e, o/ — pairs that change word meaning but are virtually indistinguishable on lips. Regional dialects vary in which contrast they maintain, meaning a deaf caller may be tracking a distinction the speaker is not making, or missing one they are.
Raddoppiamento fonosintattico
- Function words double the consonant that follows them
- Italian has a phonological rule that doubles the initial consonant of a word after certain function words: a casa (at home) is pronounced [ak:asa]. This means the consonant at the start of a content word appears to belong to the preceding function word. For a deaf caller reading lip shapes, word boundaries shift continuously throughout natural Italian speech.
Regional dialect speed
- Southern Italian accents are significantly faster with different vowel systems
- Neapolitan, Sicilian, and Calabrian Italian are spoken at higher rates than standard northern Italian, with different vowel systems and reduction patterns. A deaf caller familiar with Milan Italian may not follow fast Palermitan speech on a call from Sicily. Southern calls from family members carry the strongest regional variation.
Vowel elision at word boundaries
- Fast Italian drops vowels between words
- Fast Italian colloquial speech drops unstressed vowels at word boundaries: la + amica becomes l'amica, lo + altro becomes l'altro. This vowel elision happens across a wide range of function words and shifts the phonological shape of familiar words. On a phone call, the elided form may not match the full-vowel form a deaf caller recognizes.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreSignificant hearing loss across Italian adults, and phone access that hasn't caught up with policy
A 2024 European hearing care report (EHIMA) shows hearing loss affects a substantial proportion of Italian adults, consistent with the EU average. A 2003 nationwide survey found 40,887 cases of prelingual profound hearing loss in Italy, at a prevalence of 0.72 per 1,000 — with a higher rate in southern regions (0.87/1,000) than in the north (0.63/1,000). Recent cochlear implant data shows procedures nearly tripled between 2001 and 2023 (537 to 1,595), indicating a growing medically diagnosed hearing-loss population.
Italian Sign Language (Lingua dei Segni Italiana, LIS) received partial legal recognition in 2021 after decades of advocacy, making Italy one of the later European nations to formally acknowledge deaf citizens' first language. Before recognition, oralist curricula prioritizing lip reading over signed communication were standard in Italian schools — a legacy that left many deaf Italians dependent on lip reading for all communication including phone calls. Real-time relay and caption phone services are not universally available through TIM, Vodafone Italy, or Wind Tre.
Captio AI lets a deaf person in Palermo follow an ASL medical callback in Sicilian-accented Italian, navigate an Intesa Sanpaolo IVR menu, or join a WhatsApp video call with family in Milan — reading accurate captions in real time, without a relay subscription or interpreter booking.
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
"ASL callbacks are short and fast — they leave you a window of maybe 30 seconds to call back or lose the appointment slot. Captio AI shows the message in real time. I haven't missed a medical appointment callback since."
"Neapolitan Italian is fast and has different vowel patterns from standard Italian. On a phone call it's impenetrable for me. Captio AI reads Neapolitan-accented Italian accurately. Family calls from Naples are readable for the first time."
"Intesa Sanpaolo automated calls — geminate consonants in the menu options look the same on lips as single consonants. Captio AI gets the right text. I navigate banking menus correctly now."
"When my relatives in Palermo call and the whole call is Sicilian-accented Italian, Captio AI follows it. I finally understand the family calls from Sicily — something I had given up on years ago."
"ASL callbacks are short and fast — they leave you a window of maybe 30 seconds to call back or lose the appointment slot. Captio AI shows the message in real time. I haven't missed a medical appointment callback since."
"Neapolitan Italian is fast and has different vowel patterns from standard Italian. On a phone call it's impenetrable for me. Captio AI reads Neapolitan-accented Italian accurately. Family calls from Naples are readable for the first time."
"Intesa Sanpaolo automated calls — geminate consonants in the menu options look the same on lips as single consonants. Captio AI gets the right text. I navigate banking menus correctly now."
"When my relatives in Palermo call and the whole call is Sicilian-accented Italian, Captio AI follows it. I finally understand the family calls from Sicily — something I had given up on years ago."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow every call in Italian.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store