Czech live captions and productivity tool for communicating with deaf & hoh
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Czech communicating with deaf & hoh
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Czech speakers.
You speak. They read.
- Your words appear on their screen word by word
- No sign language required from you
- Works at home, at work, anywhere
- Any accent, any pace
When language is also a barrier
- You speak your language, they read in theirs
- Translates in real time as you speak
- 60+ languages, no setup
- Handles mid-sentence switches
Save the conversation for them
- Record and transcribe any exchange
- They can review everything at their own pace
- Organised by speaker
- Any length, any format
Make sure nothing important was missed
- Key points extracted from any transcript
- Useful after appointments, meetings, or important conversations
- Organised into clear sections
- Works on any saved recording
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Czech families gather around the table and talk in the direct, warm cadence of everyday Czech home life. Captio AI captions your hearing family's Czech in real time so you follow every part of the conversation, not just the fragments where someone remembered to face you.
In a Prague or Brno office, colleagues talk over desks and across open spaces in fast everyday Czech. Captio AI captions whoever is speaking so your deaf or hard of hearing colleague follows informal exchanges and quick corridor questions.
When your partner speaks Czech naturally and you are deaf or hard of hearing, Captio AI closes the gap. They talk at their normal pace; you read every word. The daily conversation at home is effortless.
Morning coffee exchanges, questions across the apartment, comments about the news. Captio AI covers the small daily Czech moments that make home feel connected — in Prague, Brno, Ostrava, or a village in Moravia.
When you meet a hearing Czech speaker for the first time, Captio AI starts immediately. They speak; you read. No awkward explaining, no pen and paper.
At a family gathering, a birthday, or a Christmas dinner, multiple people talk at once and the room fills with noise. Captio AI captions whoever you point your phone at so you are fully part of the gathering.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
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You talk. They follow. No adjustment needed.
You speak naturally
No slowing down, no special phrasing, no training required. Captio AI handles everything — you just talk the way you always do.
They read as you speak
Your words appear on their screen word by word while you are still talking. Not a summary after — the full sentence, in real time.
Works wherever you both are
Living rooms, offices, restaurants, social gatherings. No venue setup, no special conditions. Captio AI works anywhere you have a conversation.
No sign language from either side
You do not need to learn anything new. Neither do they. Captio AI bridges the gap without requiring any change to how either of you communicates.
Works with how you actually speak
Fast, accented, casual. Captio AI handles real speech — not just slow, clear dictation. You do not need to perform clarity for it to work.
Private by default
Your conversations are never recorded, stored, or shared. Audio is processed in real time and discarded immediately — nothing is kept.
Why Czech is hard to understand
The ř phoneme
- Czech ř is one of the rarest sounds in any European language and leaves no trace at the lips
- Czech ř — a raised alveolar non-sonorant trill — occurs as a phoneme in almost no other language on earth. It is produced high in the alveolar region with simultaneous frication and trill, making it acoustically distinctive but visually absent: the lips show only the surrounding vowels, not the ř itself. Words turning on ř — řeka, přijít, příběh — can become ambiguous to a deaf or HoH person reading lips.
Syllabic consonants and clusters
- Czech words like krk and vlk contain no vowel at all — only consonant closures, with no vowel opening to anchor lip-reading
- Czech /r/ and /l/ function as syllable nuclei — words like krk (neck), vlk (wolf), and čtvrt (quarter) have no vowel. The lips show only consonant closures with no vowel-shaped opening to anchor the word. These syllabic consonant sequences in fast conversational speech become a rapid succession of closures that are very difficult to segment, even for trained lip-readers.
Obecná čeština diglossia
- Colloquial Czech (obecná čeština) differs so markedly from standard Czech that they function like two separate dialects
- Czech has a pronounced diglossia: formal 'Standard Czech' and spoken 'Common Czech' (obecná čeština) differ in vowel systems, morphological endings, and phonological patterns. In any family or social setting, all speech is in obecná čeština. A deaf or HoH person who has learned Standard Czech from written materials faces a constant mismatch between what they recognise on paper and what actually comes out of familiar faces at home.
Phonemic vowel length
- Czech distinguishes words by vowel length — a purely durational contrast with no visible lip correlate
- Czech marks vowel length phonemically: draha (path) vs. dráha (railway), byt (apartment) vs. být (to be). Both members of a pair show the same mouth shape; the only difference is duration, which is auditory. In fast family conversation, even long vowels shorten slightly, narrowing the already invisible gap between short and long for a deaf or HoH lip-reader.
Moravian–Bohemian accent gap
- Moravian and Silesian Czech differ in vowel quality and intonation enough to mislead a lip-reader calibrated to Prague Czech
- The Czech Republic has significant dialect diversity: Moravian varieties use different vowel quality and a different intonation contour from Bohemian Czech, and Silesian Czech shows Polish-influenced phonology. A deaf or HoH person calibrated to a Prague speaker may find that a family member from Brno or Ostrava produces words that, on the lips, do not match the expected shapes.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in the Czech Republic: genetics, policy, and the gaps in daily life
Czech Sign Language (ČZJ) was officially recognised in 2008 under Act No. 155/1998. The Czech deaf community has a rich cultural history centred on Prague's deaf institutions, and neonatal hearing screening has been expanding. Genetic studies of the Czech and Moravian-Silesian population show that GJB2 mutations account for a substantial proportion of nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing loss — a finding consistent with Central European genetic epidemiology and documented in a 2018 PMC study of 200 patients across the region.
Despite the legal recognition of ČZJ, practical interpreter access remains limited. The recognition established a right to use sign language but did not create a funded national interpretation service comparable to those in Scandinavia or the UK. Deaf and hard of hearing Czechs outside Prague and Brno face particular difficulty accessing trained interpreters for non-emergency situations. For informal settings — family meals, home conversations, social gatherings — no formal provision exists.
In everyday domestic life, the consequences are felt most in the home. A deaf or hard of hearing Czech person living with hearing family members must navigate obecná čeština — the colloquial variety that differs systematically from the formal Czech available in written materials — through lip-reading and residual hearing. The Czech deaf community is experienced and organised, with the Czech-Moravian Unity of the Deaf active since the early twentieth century, but community resources do not substitute for real-time access to ordinary family conversation.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat you hear stays with you.
Gone the moment it ends
Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.
Not a product
Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.
Not used to train anything
What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"My family talks in obecná čeština and it sounds nothing like the Czech in books. The ř words and the dropped endings were impossible to lip-read reliably. Captio AI reads their colloquial Czech in real time and I follow the whole dinner conversation now."
"My partner's Moravian vowels shift differently from Prague Czech and I kept missing words. Captio AI reads both varieties correctly and our evenings at home are easy."
"My colleagues talk fast in Brno office Czech and nobody always remembers to face me. Captio AI captions their speech in real time and I follow desk-side conversations without needing written summaries."
"My grandchildren speak obecná čeština at full speed and I was catching fragments. Captio AI reads their speech and I follow them without needing anyone to slow down."
"My family talks in obecná čeština and it sounds nothing like the Czech in books. The ř words and the dropped endings were impossible to lip-read reliably. Captio AI reads their colloquial Czech in real time and I follow the whole dinner conversation now."
"My partner's Moravian vowels shift differently from Prague Czech and I kept missing words. Captio AI reads both varieties correctly and our evenings at home are easy."
"My colleagues talk fast in Brno office Czech and nobody always remembers to face me. Captio AI captions their speech in real time and I follow desk-side conversations without needing written summaries."
"My grandchildren speak obecná čeština at full speed and I was catching fragments. Captio AI reads their speech and I follow them without needing anyone to slow down."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Make every conversation work — for both sides in Czech.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store