InnoCaption was founded in 2007. Since then, we’ve launched and relaunched our app, won awards, and grown into a team of 40+ employees. But our mission has never changed:
To provide the best accessible communication technology to people with hearing loss and speech disabilities.
As we celebrate our 10-year anniversary, here's a look back at the moments that shaped who we are today.
Joseph Lee spent years at companies like Samsung, Qualcomm, and Pantech before a single statistic changed his direction: nearly 10% of Americans had some form of hearing loss, and many struggled with phone calls. Mobile phones were changing the world, but no one was building captioning solutions for them.
So in 2007, Joseph founded InnoCaption with a small team of engineers, building new technology that enabled faster and lower latency data communications over cellular networks. It became the foundation for something most people didn't yet believe was possible: real-time captioning on a mobile phone.
Joe Duarte, an accessibility consultant and former IBM systems engineer with profound hearing loss, encountered InnoCaption at an HLAA conference while the technology was still under development in 2012. He tested it by calling his daughter, and for the first time in his life had a normal phone conversation. He was blown away.
Joe became an angel investor in InnoCaption and, later, co-CEO alongside Joseph Lee.
In 2014, InnoCaption was granted conditional certification by the FCC as the first mobile-focused IP CTS provider. It was a milestone seven years in the making, and it changed what captioned calling could be. Certification meant the service could be provided at no cost to eligible users, funded through the FCC's Telecommunications Relay Service Fund.
When the InnoCaption mobile app was publicly launched in 2016, it was the first time that captioned calling wasn't tied to a landline, making accessible phone calls more convenient than ever. InnoCaption was also the first call captioned phone service to use live stenographers, the same trained professionals who caption courtrooms and live television.
In 2019, InnoCaption became the first IP CTS provider to offer fully automated speech recognition captions. High-quality stenographers took time to train and onboard, and the InnoCaption user base was growing faster than they could be added. Users were asking for automated captioning, too: some users valued consistently fast captioning speed over accuracy, while others wanted a way to have intimate conversations without a third party on the line.
But automated captions weren’t introduced as a replacement for stenographers: they were a choice alongside them.
In 2020, the InnoCaption brand identity and mobile app interface went through a full refresh. After years focused on building the technology, the team turned that same attention to the experience around it, resulting in a more modern identity and a cleaner interface that made the app easier to navigate for the people who use it every day.
This one wasn't just an update. In 2023, InnoCaption launched an entirely new app on iOS, rebuilt around years of user requests. It added 2-sided captioning, so users could caption both sides of a conversation or just the other party's. It added full voicemail previews with AI-generated transcripts, plus the option to have messages recaptioned by live captioners. And it added 3-way calling, a setting to silence unknown callers, and support for secondary languages in automated captions, from Spanish to Korean.
In 2024, InnoCaption acquired CaptionMate, another FCC-certified provider of captioned phone services. CaptionMate specializes in fully automated captioning with a deep multilingual focus, offering captions in over 100 languages and an app interface available in more than 150. Bringing the two teams together meant captioned calling for more people, in more languages, than either could serve alone.
In 2025, InnoCaption launched a suite of text-to-speech features for people who prefer typing to communicate on phone calls. That includes people with speech disabilities, people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing and don't voice for themselves, and people whose speech isn't always understood by the person or the automated system on the other end of the line. With AI Refine, users could turn a few typed words into a complete, natural-sounding sentence with a tap — fast enough to keep up with a live conversation.
InnoCaption Video was launched on iOS and Android just a few months ago, bringing real-time captions to video calls. Many people with hearing loss prefer video calls because visual cues and lip reading make conversation easier, but most video platforms weren't built with accessibility in mind. InnoCaption Video was created to fill that gap, giving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community a whole new way to stay connected with friends and family.
Nearly twenty years in, we're just getting started — with new leadership guiding InnoCaption forward. Here's to another decade of community and many more milestones to come.
Minah Han is a marketing professional dedicated to advancing accessible communication solutions for the deaf and hard of hearing community. At InnoCaption, she leverages her expertise in digital marketing and storytelling to amplify the voices of individuals who rely on innovative technologies for everyday conversations. Minah is passionate about bridging the gap between technology and accessibility, helping to drive awareness and education around captioned calling solutions.
InnoCaption provides real-time captioning technology making phone calls easy and accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing community. Offered at no cost to individuals with hearing loss because we are certified by the FCC. InnoCaption is the only mobile app that offers real-time captioning of phone calls through live stenographers and automated speech recognition software. The choice is yours.
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