About Us
Providing Remote, Real-Time CART, Closed Captioning Services, and Translated Captions
Empowerment: We are dedicated to enabling individuals regardless of their hearing, vision, or language to fully engage in their personal and professional lives, fostering independence and confidence.
Innovation: We leverage the latest technology to deliver accurate and reliable communication access services, continually seeking new solutions to enhance our offerings.
Customer Focus: We prioritize personalized service and satisfaction, ensuring that our clients receive tailored solutions and prompt support, creating lasting and meaningful relationships.
Integrity: We uphold the highest standards of ethics and professionalism in all our interactions and services, building trust and credibility with our clients and partners.
Inclusivity: We believe in the importance of accessibility for all and strive to create inclusive environments through our services, ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to participate fully and equally.
Premier Visual Voice was founded in May of 2012 by Margaret Downs, a legally blind real-time captioner. Being legally blind from a very young age, Margaret has first-hand experience and understanding of how crucial communication access is for everyone.
Premier Visual Voice is a leading provider of communication accessibility services, offering innovative, reliable, and personalized solutions for businesses, government entities, and individuals. We are committed to fostering inclusivity and empowerment through cutting-edge technology and exceptional customer service, ensuring that everyone can engage fully and effectively in all aspects of life.
Premier Visual Voice can provide CART and captions for:
Federal, state, and local government assemblies
Webinars and webcasts
Podcasts
Seminars
Business meetings and daily office functions
Interviews
Teleconference Calls
Classrooms/Schools
Hospitals and Doctor’s Offices
Online Programs and Classes
Post-production media, such as videos, films, audio, and any prerecorded media
Television
Radio
Telephone Captions
Sporting events
Live Theatre
Premier Visual Voice can provide audio description for:
Live theatre
Movies
Television
Sporting events
Educational videos
General public events
CART provides live captioning services for accessibility during events.
ASL or spoken language interpreting services bridge communication gaps between individuals using different languages or modes.
Meaning-for-meaning services offer text interpreting for enhanced communication clarity.
Audio Description (AD) narrates visual information for the blind and low-vision, improving comprehension of videos and live events.
For depositions and accurate legal transcript creation from recorded proceedings.
Closed captions enhance video accessibility by adding text to pre-produced media, appearing at the bottom or within the video content.
Transcription converts audio from various sources into written text using stenography, voice writing, or standard keyboards.
Subtitles translate dialogue for non-native speakers, while closed captions transcribe dialogue for the hearing impaired.
Prefer a virtual meeting? Schedule a chat with us here
This support page was last updated on March 30, 2026.
Want to learn why Caption Companion is truly the first universal unlimited realtime captioning device? Here you can find pretty much anything you want to know about it. You’re guaranteed to find something you didn’t know you could do with this thing. Live transcription has never been made so easy or useful!
If you can’t find the answer you need, feel free to reach out to us using the virtual chat in the bottom right corner, or via email, phone, or text message. (See footer at very bottom of page.)
direct YouTube playlist is here
Videos 01 through 07 are recorded in portrait (vertical) mode for easy viewing on your smartphone. After a video starts playing, you can slow it down or speed it up by clicking/tapping the cogwheel icon and choosing your playback speed. If on a computer, you can click and drag the closed captions to a different part of the screen as needed. (Note that any ads shown are placed by Google, not us.)
Looking for a good way to quickly search across all videos? Click here!
Caption Companion does same-language captioning only, not translation from one language to another. Punctuation and capitalization are not supported in all languages yet. To switch languages, open the caption screen (tap once if the menu bar is not visible), then tap the language shown in the menu bar.
Offline: 18 languages/dialects
Online: 81 languages/dialects
Caption Companion is not SAAS and is not available to purchase as a software. It does not operate as a web application. It’s a self-contained single-purpose standalone hardware device that works completely offline without internet. It does not require interfacing with any external systems. It does not store any user information, nor do we collect any user information. The product functions fully on-prem and requires no login, no account, and no subscription. The only data it stores is text from speech that it detected while the caption screen was active which it automatically deletes after 24 hours by default (but can be manually deleted by the user at any time).
If used offline, all data stays on-device (obviously) and nothing is transmitted anywhere. If connected to the internet, encrypted data is temporarily used to process custom words if the user has entered any. In both cases, audio is securely encrypted and temporarily stored on the device only to process the transcription and sound labels. Audio and text are never used to train AI models. In fact, the audio is not stored after the transcription and sound labels are processed (matter of seconds). If caption screen is open but no audio is detected, no data is created until audio is once again detected. If preferred, Caption Companion can ship with internet connectivity and the ability to export transcripts completely disabled.
Caption Companion is in the same category as other assistive communication technologies such as FM listening systems, refreshable Braille displays, or speech synthesizers. For this reason it doesn’t make sense for us to have things like a VPAT, an ACR, or pursue compliance certifications (HIPAA, FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2, ISO 27001, WCAG, etc.). However, if your organization is required to comply with Section 508 or any of the federal laws or standards mentioned above, we are happy to help you with any product questions that may be pertinent.
Regarding the tariff situation:
Our factory manufacturer for the base hardware and the Android skin that underlies Caption Companion devices is Samsung. However, Caption Companion is crafted and assembled in the United States, and ships from the United States. We were well stocked with all components before the tariff situation began in early 2025 so we don’t foresee any changes with pricing or delays in shipping at this time.
Caption Companion can work exclusively offline in multiple languages/dialects, including English. It’s perfectly acceptable to only use Caption Companion offline. If your organization has approved it and there is good internet available in your location, you can connect Caption Companion to a Wi-Fi network using the Wi-Fi Manager app on the tablet’s home screen (see Help/Demo Video 05). Once connected, the speech engine language packs should automatically update over the air in the background without you needing to prompt it or do anything.
Because the speech recognition engines automatically stay updated in the background when connected to the internet, firmware updates at the operating system level are rarely needed. If they are, and your device is online, you should see a prompt in the notifications area to update which you can install at a time that is convenient. Simply follow the on-screen instructions that will guide you through the update.
If your device shipped with Wi-Fi connectivity disabled per your request, updates can be loaded onto Caption Companion via a thumb drive. Contact us for instructions.
Identifying and visually distinguishing when someone different starts talking in a group (usually referred to as automatic speaker diarization or speaker segmentation) has proven more difficult for AI to master than most researchers thought. Meeting platforms with auto-captioning can do this without AI because each person who speaks is using a different microphone. That makes it easy to identify and label who is speaking. Try having multiple people in the same room speak into the same mic and you’ll quickly notice that the captioning cannot distinguish who is speaking. The technology does exist but it’s more common in post-production transcription. Automatically identifying speaker changes with a single audio feed in realtime is still somewhat experimental. There are apps and products that claim they can do this but typically the way they work is by transcribing for a few seconds then going back and retroactively changing who was speaking. It can be visually distracting and it doesn’t always get it right. In our testing of several apps and products in 2024 and 2025, sometimes the text was constantly shifting making it hard to read, sometimes it showed a different person speaking when it was the same person, and sometimes it didn’t do anything when another person started speaking.
Despite being highly accurate for a wide range of speech, Caption Companion cannot yet visually designate when a different person starts speaking. We certainly want Caption Companion to have this feature but we need to wait until the technology matures and becomes more reliable, so as of yet there is no specific timeline when or how this will be implemented. If speaker designation is crucial for your needs, what you can do is pre-schedule a human remote captioner to connect instead, and their text can appear right on your Caption Companion. (Contact your Caption Companion reseller for more details.)
Caption Companion is designed as a single-purpose device rather than a typical tablet that has multiple functions. This is one key to its success in obtaining highly accurate captioning. Personal apps can’t be installed on a Caption Companion as it is not intended to replace one’s personal phone, tablet, or computer.
With the exception of voicing for typed responses (in which case you would typically want the sound coming out of the device’s speakers), Caption Companion doesn’t produce any sound on its own. Hence it is not beneficial to pair one’s hearing aids or cochlear implants to the device. Its sole purpose is to caption sound from other sources. This is the reason for the Help/Demo Videos showing the various ways to get direct audio input into the device.
If there is something you are hoping to accomplish with Caption Companion but you aren’t sure how it can be done, feel free to reach out to us!
If you have never connected your Caption Companion to the internet, the time showing in the status bar as well as the date and time stamps in the captioning screen may not sync with your local time. This does not affect the accuracy of the captioning as it can work exclusively in offline mode. In such cases, do not rely on Caption Companion for precise date and time. If connected to the internet, the date and time should automatically correct and sync. To connect to a Wi-Fi network, go to the tablet’s home screen and tap the icon group in the top left corner, then tap the purple Wi-Fi Manager icon. (See Help/Demo Video 05 – Wi-Fi for more details.) It may take a few hours for the correct time to start showing up. You can try forcing it to sync by enabling Airplane mode for a few seconds, then disabling it. (The Airplane mode icon is found by swiping down from the top of the screen with two fingers, or swiping down twice with one finger.)
As described in Help/Demo Video 02 (see 1 minute 42 seconds), a PIN or passcode is not required to operate Caption Companion. This is only for Caption Companion technical support to access factory settings. Simply swipe in from either side to go back as indicated on the screen.
While on the captioning screen, the tablet will never go to sleep. However, if you have sound labels enabled, the screen will dim after 2 or 3 minutes of silence to save power and prolong the life of the display, regardless of whether the tablet is plugged in and charging or not. It should light back up by itself the moment it detects sound or speech. You can also make it light back up by tapping the screen or interacting with the tablet in any way. Turning off sound labels under “More settings” prevents the captioning screen from ever dimming.
If for some reason the captioning screen remains dimmed even while actively captioning:
If after watching Help/Demo Video 08, the computer does not seem to recognize when Caption Companion is plugged in with USB cable, here are the ordered troubleshooting steps we would follow should you reach out for support. In 99.9% of the cases, the issue is resolved in an early step long before getting to the last step.
It may appear the custom audio cable won’t go all the way into the tablet’s audio jack when you have a case on your Caption Companion, especially since the angled end of the audio cable labeled CAPTION COMPANION seems too short and is hexagonal in shape while the cutout hole for the audio jack in the case is round. However, if you push hard enough, the cable does finally punch through the rubber cutout hole in the case and reaches down far enough to securely plug all the way into the tablet’s audio jack.
If your tablet’s battery drains completely and powers off automatically, it may need a half-hour or so plugged in before it can even display that it’s charging. Please be patient. While turned off and charging, briefly pressing the power button on the side of the device should display the tablet’s current battery percentage. Wait until at least 5% before powering it on again.