Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Lithuanian live captions and productivity tool for communicating with deaf & hoh

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

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Captio AI app showing live captions

Download for free

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Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

👨‍👩‍👧Family conversations

A Lithuanian family dinner where grandparents may speak Žemaitian dialect from western Lithuania and younger family members use Standard Lithuanian. Captio AI keeps up with every voice at the table.

💼As a hearing colleague

A Lithuanian household where conversations happen spontaneously — morning questions, remarks from another room, quick exchanges with hearing children. Captio AI keeps a deaf or hard of hearing person connected to home life.

❤️Partners and relationships

At home with a hearing partner whose family speaks Žemaitian or one of the eastern Aukštaitian varieties. Captio AI captions their speech correctly so home conversation does not require extra effort.

🏠Living together

Meeting a hearing partner's Lithuanian family, or being introduced to new neighbours. Captio AI captions the first conversation in real time.

🤝Introducing someone new

A Lithuanian summer gathering at a family farmstead (sodyba) or a lakeside reunion, where people from different regions bring their own dialects. Captio AI captions the conversation so a deaf or hard of hearing person is part of it.

👥Mixed group settings

Spontaneous street conversation in Vilnius or Kaunas, quick exchanges at the corner shop or pharmacy. Captio AI captions what the person behind the counter is saying in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Lithuanian
90.6%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

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Captio AI in everyday use
Why Captio AI

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.

Lithuanian

Why Lithuanian is hard to understand

Free distinctive stress

  • Lithuanian stress can fall on any syllable — and stress changes meaning
  • Lithuanian has free stress — it can fall on any syllable and must be memorized, not predicted by rule. Two words with identical consonants and vowels differ only in which syllable is stressed. Stress position has no visual lip trace. A deaf or hard of hearing lip reader cannot distinguish these stress-minimal pairs from outside the mouth.

Phonemic palatalization

  • Every consonant can be hard or soft — a distinction invisible at the lips
  • Every Lithuanian consonant can be palatalized (soft) or non-palatalized (hard), and this distinction changes word meaning. Palatalization is produced by raising the tongue toward the palate — a movement with no surface visibility from outside the mouth. Two words distinguished only by consonant softness look identical to a lip reader.

Žemaitian dialect

  • Western Samogitian dialects have different vowels and diphthongs from Standard Lithuanian
  • Standard Lithuanian is based on the Aukštaitian (Highland) dialect, but approximately 500,000 people in western Lithuania speak Žemaitian (Samogitian), which has significantly different vowel patterns, diphthongs, and consonant realizations. A lip reader calibrated to Standard Lithuanian encounters a substantially different phonological profile from a Žemaitian speaker.

Vowel length

  • Long and short vowels are phonemically distinct but look the same from outside
  • Lithuanian has five short and five long vowels, all phonemically distinctive. Vowel duration is entirely acoustic — the long and short version of the same vowel produce identical lip positions. Near-homophone pairs distinguished only by vowel length appear in everyday Lithuanian vocabulary.

Fast casual reduction

  • Everyday Lithuanian contracts endings and runs syllables together at speed
  • Everyday Lithuanian conversation contracts verb endings, drops unstressed syllables, and runs words together. Standard classroom Lithuanian does not match the speed and reduction of natural family speech at a dinner table or a neighbourhood conversation.

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The Challenge

Lithuania recognized sign language in 1995, but 14,500 deaf users still navigate everyday family conversations without support.

The deaf community in Lithuania numbers approximately 14,500 people who use Lithuanian Sign Language as their primary language, according to data from the Lithuanian Union of the Deaf. On 4 May 1995, Lithuania formally recognized Lithuanian Sign Language under the Constitution — one of the earlier Central European countries to enshrine sign language rights. The National Programme of Using Sign Language, elaborated jointly by the Ministry of Social Security and the Ministry of Education, established formal goals for interpreter services in state institutions and public life.

Despite early formal recognition, the gap between policy and practice remains visible in informal communication settings. Lithuanian Sign Language interpretation is mandated in governmental and educational contexts, but family gatherings, neighbourhood conversations, and the spontaneous exchanges of daily life are outside any interpreter mandate. The Lithuanian Association of Families with Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children (PAGAVA) has documented persistent barriers to inclusion in family communication — where many deaf people in Lithuania still navigate a hearing world in which very few family members sign.

The GBD 2019 study (PMC7960691) estimated that 1.5 billion people globally live with some degree of hearing loss. For Lithuania, a country of under 2.8 million people, the hearing loss burden is proportionally significant. The gap is most acutely felt not in formal services — where Lithuania's legal frameworks provide some floor — but in the informal, unscheduled communication that makes up the texture of daily home life.

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Privacy

What 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.

100% PRIVATE

Private by default

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Reviews

People love Captio AI

"My family speaks Žemaitian — different vowels and rhythm from Standard Lithuanian. Captio AI reads their speech correctly and I follow the full family conversation now."

Rasa K. 🇱🇹
rasa.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing family uses Žemaitian dialect, Klaipėda

"My partner's family speaks fast Vilnius Lithuanian and contracts everything at speed. Captio AI keeps up and family evenings at home are easy now."

Tomas J. 🇱🇹
tomas.j***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing partner and family from Vilnius, Vilnius

"Relatives visit from different parts of Lithuania and each speaks a slightly different variety. Captio AI reads them all correctly and I am part of every family gathering."

Aistė M. 🇱🇹
aiste.m***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing relatives visit from Šiauliai and Panevėžys, Kaunas

"Workplace conversations happen fast in casual Lithuanian. Captio AI keeps me in those conversations without anyone needing to slow down or repeat."

Mindaugas V. 🇱🇹
mindaugas.v***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing colleagues at a Kaunas company, Kaunas

"My family speaks Žemaitian — different vowels and rhythm from Standard Lithuanian. Captio AI reads their speech correctly and I follow the full family conversation now."

Rasa K. 🇱🇹
rasa.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing family uses Žemaitian dialect, Klaipėda

"My partner's family speaks fast Vilnius Lithuanian and contracts everything at speed. Captio AI keeps up and family evenings at home are easy now."

Tomas J. 🇱🇹
tomas.j***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing partner and family from Vilnius, Vilnius

"Relatives visit from different parts of Lithuania and each speaks a slightly different variety. Captio AI reads them all correctly and I am part of every family gathering."

Aistė M. 🇱🇹
aiste.m***@gmail.com
Deaf, hearing relatives visit from Šiauliai and Panevėžys, Kaunas

"Workplace conversations happen fast in casual Lithuanian. Captio AI keeps me in those conversations without anyone needing to slow down or repeat."

Mindaugas V. 🇱🇹
mindaugas.v***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, hearing colleagues at a Kaunas company, Kaunas

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Make every conversation work — for both sides in Lithuanian.

Captio AI is free to start

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