#266 CaptionHub CEO Tom Bridges on AI-Powered Real-Time Media Accessibility

Tom Bridges, CEO and Founder of CaptionHub, joins SlatorPod to talk about how a small in-house tool evolved into a global AI-powered multimedia localization platform. 

Tom began his career in post-production and visual effects before stumbling into subtitling when a client needed to localize a video into 16 languages overnight. He reveals that the disorganized workflows relying on spreadsheets inspired him to create a more efficient, centralized solution, which became CaptionHub.

Tom explains that CaptionHub has since grown from a subtitling tool into a full multimedia localization platform integrating speech recognition, machine translation, and synthetic voice. He adds that the platform’s strength lies in being AI-agnostic and offering end-to-end workflows that balance automation with human-in-the-loop processes.

Tom describes how CaptionHub’s new product suite, Timbra, enables real-time media localization and has already supported major live events. He says live captioning is technically complex but benefits from the company’s years of research into video-on-demand subtitling quality.

Tom notes that accessibility regulations like the European Accessibility Act are driving demand, while AI and language models are opening new frontiers such as lip-sync and sign-language integration. 

Tom envisions a future where speech-to-speech translation, synthetic dubbing, and real-time localization merge into seamless, scalable experiences. CaptionHub’s mission remains to make multimedia communication universally accessible and efficient through human and AI collaboration.