Why one-language captions fail a bilingual family
Most live caption tools ask you to choose a language before you start. Pick Spanish and the English half of the conversation turns into nonsense; pick English and the same happens the other way round. Changing the setting every few minutes is not something anyone does at a family table.
For a person with hearing loss this is worse than for everyone else. Lip-reading and context are already doing a lot of work, and garbled captions take away the one thing that was supposed to help.
How Akoe handles two languages
Akoe has no language to choose. It listens to the room, writes each person’s words in the language they were said in, and keeps going when someone switches. A sentence that starts in Spanish and ends in English comes out as it was spoken.
- Spanish and English mixed freely, in the same sentence if that is how your family talks.
- Each line under the name of whoever said it, so you know who is talking even when two people answer at once.
- The words as said. Akoe does not rewrite what people say.
- If you would rather read everything in one language, there is a setting for captions in Spanish or in English.
I’ll call her tomorrow before ten.
Dile que llevamos el postre.
Dad, are you coming with us on Sunday?
Set up once, for the whole family
Setup takes about a minute: the person using the app reads two sentences so that Akoe learns their voice and leaves it out of the captions (you do not need to read your own words). After that they open the app and it listens. Often it is a son or daughter who does the setup and adds the family’s names.
Akoe is for iPhone (iPhone 11 or newer, iOS 26). It is not on the App Store yet; leave your email and we will tell you the day it is.
Questions
Do I have to choose Spanish or English?
No. Akoe follows whichever language each person speaks, including when they switch in the middle of a sentence.
Does it work with other languages?
Spanish and English are the languages it has been tested in. Others may come later.
