Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Welsh live captions and productivity tool for tv & media

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.

📺Live TV — news, sport, events

Live TV in Welsh moves fast — an S4C news bulletin, a Six Nations match, an Eisteddfod broadcast. Point Captio AI at the screen and read the commentary and reporting in real time as it happens.

🎬Streaming content

Streaming and on-demand carry S4C dramas and Welsh originals, but captioning can be patchy across platforms. Captio AI captions a series or film from the audio, so you follow the dialogue whether or not the platform provides Welsh subtitles.

📱YouTube and social media

Welsh YouTube and social clips — creators from Cardiff, Bangor, and the valleys — rarely carry reliable captions. Point Captio AI at the speaker and read every word.

🌍Foreign-language content

Foreign and English-language content reaches Welsh screens alongside Welsh programming. Captio AI captions the Welsh audio track in real time, so Welsh content is as accessible to you as anything in English.

🎭Cinema

In a Cardiff cinema showing a Welsh-language film, hold your phone toward the audio and read the dialogue as the scene plays.

🎧Podcasts and audio content

Welsh podcasts and radio — news, sport, culture — arrive as audio only. Upload a recording to Captio AI and read the full conversation as text.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Welsh
85.7%

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 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.

Welsh

Why Welsh is hard to understand

Consonant mutations

  • The start of a word changes shape
  • Welsh mutates the first consonant of a word depending on grammar — the same word can begin with different sounds in different sentences. A deaf viewer lip-reading a presenter has to catch a changing opening consonant that gives little visible cue, and guessing wrong changes the word entirely.

Ll and rh

  • Sounds made with no clear lip picture
  • Welsh has the voiceless lateral 'll' and the voiceless 'rh', made with airflow around the tongue rather than a distinct lip movement. On screen they look like an ordinary l or r, so a deaf viewer cannot tell these very common Welsh sounds apart from their plain counterparts.

North–south divide

  • North and south Welsh sound different
  • Northern and southern Welsh differ in vocabulary, vowels, and everyday phrasing, and both appear across S4C's schedule. A deaf viewer calibrated to a southern presenter meets different word choices and sounds from a northern drama or interview.

Welsh–English code-switching

  • English dropped into Welsh mid-sentence
  • Everyday Welsh mixes in English words and phrases constantly, and on-screen speakers do it freely. The switch is instant and invisible on the lips, so a deaf viewer cannot tell when a line has just slipped from Welsh into English and back.

Fast delivery

  • Presenters and characters speak quickly
  • In a live bulletin or a soap the delivery is fast, and the mutations, the ll and rh, and the reduced vowels all blur together. On screen there is no chance to slow a presenter down, so a deaf viewer following the lips loses the thread within a sentence.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
The Challenge

The scale of the challenge

More than 590,000 adults in Wales live with hearing loss — over half a million people in a nation of just over three million. It is one of the most common long-term conditions in the country, and for many of those viewers the screen only works if the words are written down.

Welsh-language television is comparatively well regulated: under Ofcom rules the main UK broadcasters subtitle the vast majority of their output, and S4C has long offered subtitles, historically on teletext pages 888 in English and 889 in Welsh. But provision thins out quickly beyond scheduled broadcast — on streaming, social video, and live or unscripted content — and a structural gap remains, with signers for Welsh-language programmes so rare that they typically work from English subtitles rather than directly from Welsh.

The result is a viewer well served on flagship Welsh broadcasts and left short on everything around them — live sport, online clips, and the fast bilingual chat that fills Welsh screens. Captio AI closes that gap: point the phone at any screen — an S4C bulletin, a streaming drama, a Six Nations match — and read Welsh captions in real time from the audio, whatever the channel and whether or not the content was captioned.

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

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Reviews

People love Captio AI

"S4C subtitles a lot but streaming and online clips fall away. Captio AI captions the audio in real time, on any channel. I follow the whole schedule now."

Rhys D. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
rhys.d***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Cardiff — news viewer

"North Welsh sounds different from the south and the mutations change the start of the word. Captio AI captions the dialogue whatever the region. I stopped guessing at the plot."

Ffion W. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
ffion.w***@gmail.com
Deaf, Bangor — drama viewer

"Live commentary runs fast and the ll and rh give me nothing on the lips. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. The words match the match."

Dewi J. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
dewi.j***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Swansea — rugby viewer

"Speakers slip between Welsh and English every sentence and I lose which one I am missing. Captio AI captions both from the audio. It covers exactly what the platforms leave out."

Elin M. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
elin.m***@gmail.com
Deaf, Aberystwyth — streaming viewer

"S4C subtitles a lot but streaming and online clips fall away. Captio AI captions the audio in real time, on any channel. I follow the whole schedule now."

Rhys D. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
rhys.d***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Cardiff — news viewer

"North Welsh sounds different from the south and the mutations change the start of the word. Captio AI captions the dialogue whatever the region. I stopped guessing at the plot."

Ffion W. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
ffion.w***@gmail.com
Deaf, Bangor — drama viewer

"Live commentary runs fast and the ll and rh give me nothing on the lips. Captio AI captions it in real time from the audio. The words match the match."

Dewi J. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
dewi.j***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Swansea — rugby viewer

"Speakers slip between Welsh and English every sentence and I lose which one I am missing. Captio AI captions both from the audio. It covers exactly what the platforms leave out."

Elin M. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
elin.m***@gmail.com
Deaf, Aberystwyth — streaming viewer

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Watch anything in Welsh.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store