Kazakh 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 Kazakh communicating with deaf & hoh
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Kazakh 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.
Kazakh families gather around the dastarkhan and talk at the pace of people comfortable with each other. Captio AI captions your hearing family's Kazakh in real time so you follow every thread — at the table in Almaty, in a home in Nur-Sultan, or in a village in the steppe.
In a Kazakh office where colleagues move between Kazakh and Russian mid-conversation, Captio AI captions whoever is speaking so your deaf or hard of hearing colleague follows the shift without confusion or delay.
When your partner speaks Kazakh naturally and you are deaf or hard of hearing, Captio AI closes the gap. They talk; you read. The end-of-day conversation at home becomes something you have fully, not partially.
Morning questions, comments from the kitchen, exchanges over the television news. Captio AI covers the small daily Kazakh moments that make home feel connected — in the city and in the countryside.
When you meet a hearing Kazakh speaker for the first time, Captio AI starts immediately. They speak; you read. No awkward briefing, no pen and paper, no gesturing while everyone stands around.
At an otbasy gathering, a toı (wedding), or a neighbourhood celebration, multiple people speak at once and noise fills the space. Captio AI captions whoever you point your phone at so you are part of the occasion.
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 Kazakh is hard to understand
Uvular consonants at the throat
- Kazakh uvular q and back consonants are produced deep in the throat with no visible lip signal
- Kazakh has contrastive uvular stops and fricatives — the uvular /q/ and back /ɣ/ — that contrast with velar /k/ and /ɡ/. The word for sheep (qoy) versus other forms turn on this distinction. But uvular sounds produce no labial movement; from the perspective of a deaf or HoH person watching a family member's face, q and k look identical.
Nine-vowel tongue-root harmony
- Kazakh's nine-vowel tongue-root harmony system operates with very low visual differentiation between pairs
- Kazakh uses advanced tongue-root (ATR) vowel harmony — distinguishing 9 vowel phonemes through front-back and tongue-root position. The differences between harmonically alternating pairs like /e/ and /æ/ are primarily auditory: both show a similar spread-lip shape that is very difficult to distinguish across a room or at a family table with any background noise.
Kazakh–Russian code-switching
- Urban everyday conversation switches freely between Kazakh and Russian, often within a single sentence
- Most urban Kazakh speakers are bilingual. A single sentence may combine Kazakh morphology with Russian nouns — 'Men magazinge bardym' — or Russian syntax with Kazakh suffixes. For a deaf or HoH person lip-reading, the shift between the two phonological systems is auditory, not visual: the lip shapes of Russian and Kazakh are different enough that midsentence switches create genuine confusion.
Latin/Cyrillic script transition
- The ongoing shift from Cyrillic to Latin script disrupts the internalized spelling patterns deaf users rely on for lip-reading support
- Kazakhstan is transitioning Kazakh from a Cyrillic to a Latin-based alphabet. For deaf and HoH users who supplement lip-reading with literacy-based strategies, the shift means the written form of a word may no longer match the spelling pattern the speaker has internalized — disrupting the mental cross-reference between written word and lip shape.
Rural–urban accent divergence
- Rural Kazakh preserves older phonological features that diverge from the urban standard a deaf person may have calibrated to
- Rural Kazakh speakers maintain older inventory features — more distinctly pronounced uvulars, different vowel quality — while urban speakers in Almaty and Nur-Sultan have shifted toward Russian-influenced pronunciation. A deaf or HoH person from one context must read an unfamiliar phonological system off the same familiar face when a family member comes from a different region.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreHearing loss in Kazakhstan: burden, policy gaps, and the daily cost
A 2026 Frontiers in Public Health study on hearing loss burden and screening in Kazakhstan found an age-standardized prevalence of 17,212 per 100,000 — meaning more than one in six Kazakhstanis has some degree of hearing impairment. The Astana Times reported more than 150,000 people in Kazakhstan with significant hearing and related disabilities, while other sources place the figure above 200,000 when partial hearing loss is included. Mild hearing loss accounts for 71.9% of the total burden, reflecting the large number of people who experience communication difficulty in daily life without being formally classified as deaf.
Kazakhstan's Social Code provides for state-funded sign language interpretation, but the allocation is strikingly low: 30 hours per year — approximately two and a half hours per month. Experts quoted in the Astana Times have described this as insufficient for basic daily communication needs, noting that hard-of-hearing individuals are often classified only in the third disability group, limiting their access to benefits and services. The non-competitiveness of hard-of-hearing people on the labour market was directly attributed to the communication gap between deaf employees and hearing employers — a gap the state's 30-hour allocation cannot close.
In daily domestic life, the gap falls hardest in informal settings that no policy covers: family conversations at the dastarkhan, questions from a spouse or child, exchanges with neighbours, or the ordinary talk of a household evening. These moments cannot be booked. No interpreter will be there. A deaf or HoH Kazakhstani navigates them through lip-reading, gesture, and dependence on hearing family members — strategies that are workable in isolation but exhausting and incomplete across a full day.
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 at the dastarkhan talks fast and mixes Kazakh and Russian in the same sentence. I was catching pieces. Captio AI reads both languages in the same caption stream and I follow the whole conversation now."
"My partner switches between Kazakh and Russian constantly at home — it's just how we talk. Captio AI handles both without skipping anything and our evenings are easy."
"My office is Kazakh and Russian mixed all day. Captio AI reads both in the same stream and I follow desk conversations without asking for written summaries."
"My grandchildren speak fast informal Kazakh and I was missing most of it. Captio AI reads their speech and I understand them without needing them to slow down."
"My family at the dastarkhan talks fast and mixes Kazakh and Russian in the same sentence. I was catching pieces. Captio AI reads both languages in the same caption stream and I follow the whole conversation now."
"My partner switches between Kazakh and Russian constantly at home — it's just how we talk. Captio AI handles both without skipping anything and our evenings are easy."
"My office is Kazakh and Russian mixed all day. Captio AI reads both in the same stream and I follow desk conversations without asking for written summaries."
"My grandchildren speak fast informal Kazakh and I was missing most of it. Captio AI reads their speech and I understand them without needing them to slow down."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Make every conversation work — for both sides in Kazakh.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store