Live Captions for
Deaf & Hard of Hearing

MirrorCaption delivers real-time live captions for deaf and hard of hearing users in 50+ selectable languages, across browser-based meetings — Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Webex — and face-to-face conversations, with no bot joining your call.

Platform captioning tools have one thing in common: they stop at their own front door. Zoom captions work in Zoom. Teams captions work in Teams. For professionals who move between platforms every day, that's not a solution — it's a different set of gaps on each platform.

MirrorCaption runs outside the meeting platform. Open a browser tab in desktop Chrome or Microsoft Edge, share the meeting tab's audio, and read live captions in your language. For in-person conversations, open Talk mode on your phone and use the microphone.

Why Platform-Specific Captions Fall Short

Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet all offer some form of live captioning. For a monolingual English speaker who uses only one platform, that's often adequate. For many deaf and hard of hearing professionals, the reality is messier.

Consider a week in the life of a senior engineer with moderate hearing loss (an illustrative scenario many DHH professionals recognise). Monday standup is on Zoom. Wednesday client review is on Teams. Friday retrospective is on Google Meet. Each platform has a captioning feature, but translated captions, language lists, transcript access, and host or tenant settings differ from one environment to the next. None of those platform-native captions follow her into the conference room for the in-person segment of Wednesday's call.

The pattern is consistent: every platform-native tool stops at its own border. Switch platforms, and the caption controls, language options, transcript behavior, and account rules change. Attend an in-person meeting, and the platform caption layer disappears entirely. MirrorCaption gives you one captioning workflow across browser-based calls and in-person conversations.

How MirrorCaption Works for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users

MirrorCaption runs in the browser. Meet mode for meeting-tab audio is designed for desktop Chrome and Microsoft Edge; Talk mode uses the microphone and works best in Chrome on mobile. No download, no extension, no software to install or update. Setup from first visit to live captions takes under two minutes.

The app runs in two modes:

Meet mode — for video calls. While your Zoom, Teams, or Meet call runs in one desktop Chrome or Edge tab, open MirrorCaption in a second tab and share the meeting tab's audio. MirrorCaption captures the audio from the meeting and streams live captions in real time. You can keep both tabs visible side by side, or run MirrorCaption on a second screen.

Talk mode — for in-person conversations. Open the app on your phone. Place it between you and the person you're speaking with. MirrorCaption transcribes the spoken words as they appear on screen. If there's a language barrier alongside the hearing one, set a target language and both parties can read a real-time translation. No separate interpreter device, no app for the other person to install.

Live Captions in 50+ Languages — Including Yours

Platform captioning tools have improved quickly, but language coverage is still tied to each platform's account model, meeting settings, and supported language list. For deaf and hard of hearing users who communicate in Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, Korean, Portuguese, or other non-European languages, that can mean a different captioning setup for every meeting host.

MirrorCaption supports 50+ selectable languages for live transcription and translation in the same session. A deaf Japanese speaker on a French-language call can read captions in Japanese while the meeting proceeds in French. The transcription and the translation run simultaneously — the original language appears on one line, your chosen caption language on the other, with translated words linked back to the source words they came from.

Illustrative scenario: Picture a project manager based in Osaka working for a French logistics company. She has significant sensorineural hearing loss and depends on captions for every meeting. Her French manager speaks French; her Japanese supply-chain partners speak Japanese. Native captioning becomes inconsistent because each call has different platform and host settings. With MirrorCaption, she keeps one browser-tab workflow for supported language pairs — consistent output, no per-platform configuration.

Languages include: Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, and 30+ others.

The Real Cost of CART — and the Alternative

CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is the professional standard for accessibility captioning. A trained captioner produces verbatim real-time captions, with the preparation and human judgment that high-stakes settings require. For legal proceedings, clinical consultations, or any situation where every word carries legal or medical weight, CART remains the right tool.

The problem is cost. Professional CART services often run around $100 to $200 per hour in the United States, depending on provider, setting, and whether the event is remote or onsite. Five one-hour meetings per week — a fairly typical week for a knowledge worker — comes to $500–1,000 weekly, or $25,000–50,000 per year. Unless an employer has an established ADA accommodation budget and the procurement process to match, that cost often falls to the individual.

Illustrative scenario: Consider a DHH product manager at a 30-person startup whose team wants to support him but has no formal accommodation infrastructure yet. Professional CART for daily one-hour standups would cost roughly $500 per week even at the low end. Instead, he uses MirrorCaption: €49 once, 200 hours included. That covers roughly 40 weeks of daily one-hour standups before any top-up. When he approaches the limit, he tops up with a Voice Pack at €2.99 for 5 hours. His total annual cost: under €70.

No Bot Joins Your Meeting

Meeting bots — the kind that add themselves to the participant list with a name like "Otter.ai Notetaker" or "Fireflies" — create a visible signal that someone has requested an accommodation tool. For some users that's fine. For others, it's a layer of disclosure they'd rather control themselves.

MirrorCaption never joins the call. In Meet mode, it captures audio from a browser tab using screen/audio capture APIs supported in desktop Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Your meeting participant list stays exactly as it was. The captions appear in a separate browser tab that only you can see.

There's also no extension to approve or meeting bot to invite. MirrorCaption is a web app — it requests browser microphone or tab-audio permissions. Some workplaces restrict third-party web apps or screen capture, so internal policy still applies, but there is no installed client or per-platform integration to configure.

A Transcript You Can Keep

Live captions built into Zoom, Teams, and Meet are primarily meeting-time aids. Some platforms offer separate transcript or recording features, but those depend on account permissions, meeting settings, or host choices. If you only had captions turned on, the text may not be available after the call.

MirrorCaption saves the full session transcript to local browser storage on your device when storage is available. During the call, you can scroll back to any earlier segment without pausing the live feed. After the call, the transcript remains available in session history for review, search, backup, or export from the app's data tools.

The distinction between ephemeral captions and a retained transcript matters for accessibility workflows. If you'd like to understand the practical differences, our live captions vs transcripts guide covers both use cases in detail.

Where It Fits Your Day

Get Live Captions in Under 2 Minutes

No installation steps, no browser extension, no onboarding call. Here's the complete workflow:

1. Open the app at mirrorcaption.com/app. Use desktop Chrome or Microsoft Edge for Meet mode, or Chrome on mobile for Talk mode. A free account gives you 1 hour to try with no credit card.
2. Choose a mode: Meet for video calls, Talk for in-person conversations.
3. In Meet mode: Start your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet call in a separate desktop Chrome or Edge tab. Return to MirrorCaption and share that tab's audio when prompted.
4. Set your languages: Choose the speaker's language and your preferred caption language. Leave translation off if you only want transcription.
5. Read live captions as they appear in real time. The full transcript saves automatically to local browser storage throughout the session when storage is available.

For multilingual remote teams where hearing loss is one consideration among several, MirrorCaption's translation layer means the same tool serves colleagues across different hearing abilities and different languages simultaneously.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How do I get live captions without paying for Zoom AI Companion?

  Open MirrorCaption in a second desktop Chrome or Edge tab while your Zoom call runs in the first. Share the Zoom tab's audio to MirrorCaption. Live captions appear immediately — no Zoom AI Companion subscription required for MirrorCaption itself. The free tier includes 1 hour to try with no credit card.

• Does MirrorCaption work with hearing aids or cochlear implants?

  MirrorCaption is a screen-based captioning tool — it transcribes speech and displays text visually on your screen. It works regardless of what hearing devices you use or don't use, since it outputs text that you read, not audio that you hear. On mobile, the display is optimised for reading at arm's length.

• Is there a mobile version?

  Yes. MirrorCaption is a Progressive Web App with a mobile layout. Talk mode is designed for phone use, held between two people or placed on a table, and works best in Chrome on mobile. Meet mode's meeting-tab audio capture is for desktop Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

• How accurate are the captions?

  Accuracy is high in well-recorded video calls with a single clear speaker. It drops in noisy environments, with heavy background sound, or with strongly accented speech on less common languages. MirrorCaption is not a certified verbatim service — for legal depositions, clinical documentation, or formal proceedings requiring certified accuracy, professional CART remains the appropriate choice. For everyday professional meetings, accuracy is typically strong enough to follow the conversation in real time.

• Can I use MirrorCaption for in-person conversations?

  Yes — that's what Talk mode is for. Open the app on your phone, tap Talk, and MirrorCaption will transcribe whoever is speaking. If there's also a language barrier, set source and target languages so both parties can read a real-time translation. No second device, no app for the other person. Works at a doctor appointment, a job interview, a reception desk, or anywhere you'd otherwise need an interpreter.

• Does my employer need to pay, or can I self-fund?

  MirrorCaption is priced for individual use. The free tier includes 1 hour to try and requires no credit card. The Lifetime plan is a one-time €49 payment — 200 hours included, all future updates included, no recurring charge. Many users self-fund without employer involvement. If your employer wants to provide it as an ADA or workplace accommodation, the one-time pricing makes the expense straightforward to process as a one-line equipment purchase rather than a recurring SaaS contract.