Estonian live captions and productivity tool for tv & media
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store
Everything you need to follow Estonian tv & media
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Estonian speakers.
Captions anything playing in real time
- Point the phone toward the speaker and read along
- Works on any TV, laptop, tablet, or phone
- No subtitle file required — captions from the audio directly
- Faster than pre-generated subtitles for live content
Watch content in any language
- Foreign films, foreign news, foreign YouTube — all translated in real time
- They speak their language — you read in yours
- 60+ languages, no setup
- Works as content plays
Full transcript of any recording
- Upload a recording and get the complete written transcript
- For lectures, podcasts, talks, or any long-form content
- Searchable and copyable
- Any language, any format
Key points from any content
- Main ideas and takeaways from any transcript
- Useful for news, documentaries, and long-form content
- 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.
Live TV in Estonian moves fast — an ERR news bulletin, a basketball game, a Song Festival broadcast. Point Captio AI at the screen and read the commentary and reporting in real time as it happens.
Streaming catalogues carry Estonian dubs and originals, but deaf-accessible captions are inconsistent. Captio AI captions a series or film from the audio, so you follow the dialogue whether or not the platform provides subtitles.
Estonian YouTube and social clips — creators from Tallinn, Tartu, and Narva — rarely carry reliable captions. Point Captio AI at the speaker and read every word.
Foreign films reach Estonian screens subtitled or voiced-over. Captio AI captions the Estonian audio track in real time, so you can follow the dialogue directly rather than racing a single narrator's voice.
In a Tallinn cinema showing an Estonian film, hold your phone toward the audio and read the dialogue as the scene plays.
Estonian podcasts and radio — news, history, culture — arrive as audio only. Upload a recording to Captio AI and read the full conversation as text.
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 content that subtitles fail
Captions any content in real time
Point the phone toward any speaker — TV, laptop, tablet, cinema screen. Captio AI captions whatever is playing, regardless of whether that platform provides subtitles.
Faster than built-in subtitles for live content
Pre-generated subtitles lag behind live TV by several seconds. Captio AI captions in real time — so you read what is being said as it is being said.
Works on any screen or device
No integration required. Point the phone toward the audio source — the same approach works for a large TV, a laptop screen, a cinema, or a phone held at arm's length.
Any language, translated in real time
For foreign-language content, switch to Live Translator. It translates as content plays — so a French film, a German documentary, or a Japanese series all become watchable.
No subtitle file needed
Captio AI captions from the audio directly. No subtitle file, no platform support, no creator requirement. If audio plays, Captio AI can caption it.
More accurate than auto-generated captions
The industry average for AI-generated subtitles is a 10–15% word error rate — roughly 1 in 10 words wrong (3Play Media). Captio AI is built for accuracy in real-world audio conditions.
Why Estonian is hard to understand
Three lengths
- Short, long, and overlong — all invisible
- Estonian has a rare three-way length contrast: a sound can be short, long, or overlong, and the difference alone changes a word's meaning. Length is pure timing in the voice, so all three produce the same lip shape and a deaf viewer cannot tell them apart on screen.
Nine vowels
- Fine vowel distinctions the mouth blurs
- Estonian has nine vowels, including the back unrounded õ that has no near equivalent in most languages. Several of them sit close together in mouth position, so a deaf viewer watching a presenter cannot see which of the similar vowels was spoken.
Palatalization
- Softened consonants formed out of sight
- Estonian palatalizes certain consonants with a raise of the tongue toward the palate, and the softening can distinguish words. It happens inside the mouth, invisible from the front, so a deaf viewer following a film gets no cue for it.
Long word forms
- Grammar stacked onto the ends of words
- Estonian builds meaning by stacking case endings and suffixes onto a word, so a single form can carry what English needs several words for. Those endings pile up at the tail where lip-reading is weakest, and in fast speech they reduce, so a deaf viewer loses the grammar of a sentence.
South Estonian gap
- Võro and the south sound different
- South Estonian varieties such as Võro differ from standard northern Estonian in vowels and vocabulary. When a programme features a southern speaker, a deaf viewer used to the Tallinn standard meets an unfamiliar sound pattern.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreThe scale of the challenge
Around one in ten people in Estonia live with hearing loss — surveys put the figure near 11 percent, roughly 140,000 people — in a country of about 1.3 million where nearly a fifth of the population is over 65. That is a substantial audience whose access to television depends on what they can read rather than what they can hear.
Estonia has no legal requirement to make broadcast media accessible; the public broadcaster is only encouraged to do so. In practice ERR has moved forward on its own, rolling out automated subtitles from autumn 2023 for its in-house Estonian-language programmes on ETV and ETV2, using speech-recognition technology developed in Estonia. But that leaves the commercial channels, streaming, and the foreign content that fills the schedules with little or nothing built for deaf viewers.
The result is a viewer increasingly served on the public channels and shut out elsewhere — on the dramas, sport, and foreign films that make up most of the screen. Captio AI closes that gap: point the phone at any screen — an ERR bulletin, a streaming series, a voiced-over foreign film — and read Estonian captions in real time from the audio, whatever the channel and whether or not the content was captioned.
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
"ERR added automatic subtitles but the commercial channels and streaming have nothing. Captio AI captions the audio in real time, on any channel. I follow the whole evening now."
"Foreign films come voiced over by one narrator I cannot use. Captio AI captions the Estonian audio directly. I finally follow the story."
"Live commentary runs fast and the three vowel lengths give me nothing on the lips. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. The words match the game."
"A Võro speaker sounds nothing like the Tallinn news and I lose the vowels. Captio AI captions whatever variety a show uses. It covers exactly what the platforms leave out."
"ERR added automatic subtitles but the commercial channels and streaming have nothing. Captio AI captions the audio in real time, on any channel. I follow the whole evening now."
"Foreign films come voiced over by one narrator I cannot use. Captio AI captions the Estonian audio directly. I finally follow the story."
"Live commentary runs fast and the three vowel lengths give me nothing on the lips. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. The words match the game."
"A Võro speaker sounds nothing like the Tallinn news and I lose the vowels. Captio AI captions whatever variety a show uses. It covers exactly what the platforms leave out."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Watch anything in Estonian.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store