Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Belarusian live captions and productivity tool for doctor appointments

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

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Captio AI app showing live captions

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Use Cases

Every situation covered

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

🩺GP and primary care visits

At a palіklіnіka (polyclinic) in Minsk, Hrodna, or a regional town, your doctor conducts the appointment in Russian or Belarusian. Captio AI captions both languages in real time so you follow without missing critical details.

🔬Specialist consultations

At a specialist consultation at a rеspublіkanskaya klinіcheskaya balnіtsa (republican clinical hospital), medical terms arrive in Russian. Captio AI captions in real time.

💊Pharmacy conversations

At the apteka (pharmacy), the pharmacist explains dosage and interactions quickly in Russian or Belarusian. Point your phone toward them and read the instructions as they speak.

🦷Dental appointments

At the zubnoy vracha (dental surgery), the dentist gives instructions during treatment when lip-reading is impossible. Captio AI captions from audio alone.

🧠Mental health sessions

In a session with a psіkhіatar or psіkholag, sensitive conversations require full comprehension. Captio AI captions the full session so you engage without missing context.

🚑Emergency and urgent care

At the skarava medytsynskaya pomashch (emergency room), staff speak quickly under pressure. Open Captio AI and read their instructions as they arrive.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Belarusian
92.9%

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

Built for the conversations where every word matters

Captions as the doctor speaks

Words appear on screen while the doctor is still talking. You read the diagnosis, drug name, or follow-up instruction at the same moment it is said — not after they have moved on.

Medical terminology handled accurately

Drug names, procedure names, clinical terms. Captio AI handles the vocabulary of a real consultation — not just everyday speech.

Review the appointment after

Record the consultation and upload it to Audio Transcription. Get a full written record of everything said — instructions, dosages, referrals — to review at home and share with a carer if needed.

Works in any clinical setting

Consultation rooms, hospital wards, A&E, dental chairs, pharmacy counters. Place the phone near the speaker and Captio AI captions whoever is talking.

Any language

For foreign-language doctors, specialists abroad, or appointments through an interpreter. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so you follow your diagnosis in the language you understand best.

100% private

Medical conversations are among the most sensitive there are. Captio AI processes audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded, stored, or shared.

Belarusian

Why Belarusian is hard to understand

Russian dominance in healthcare

  • Belarusian healthcare runs in Russian — a different language on the lips
  • Despite Belarusian being a co-official language, Russian is the dominant language in Belarusian healthcare settings — on prescriptions, in clinical documentation, and in most doctor-patient conversations in cities. A deaf or hard of hearing patient who lip-reads Belarusian attends appointments where the doctor speaks Russian, creating a systematic language mismatch between the patient's lip-reading training and the clinical language being used.

Dzekanie and tsekanie

  • Belarusian consonant softening creates sounds absent in Russian or Polish
  • Belarusian has two distinctive phonological features — dzekanie (realisation of /d/ before front vowels as /dz/) and tsekanie (realisation of /t/ before front vowels as /ts/). These produce consonant sounds like 'dz' and 'ts' where Russian speakers would use plain 'd' and 't'. For a deaf patient lip-reading a Belarusian-speaking healthcare worker — in a setting where Belarusian is used at all — these consonant shifts produce different lip shapes from what they would see in the related Russian or Polish they might also know.

Mask-wearing impact

  • Masks in healthcare eliminated the one visual cue Belarusian deaf patients had
  • WHO documented that during the COVID-19 pandemic, deaf Belarusians found mask-wearing in healthcare settings — already their primary site of communication difficulty — catastrophic for lip-reading. The WHO Country Office in Belarus trialled a tablet-based sign-to-speech translation service in 2021 specifically because mask mandates had removed the visual lip movement that many deaf Belarusians relied on as their primary compensation for hearing loss. This documented crisis illustrated how thin the safety margin was in ordinary times.

Trasianka code-mixing

  • Trasianka mixes Belarusian and Russian in ways that confuse clear segmentation
  • Many Belarusian speakers use Trasianka — a mixed colloquial variety combining Belarusian and Russian grammar and vocabulary in variable proportions. In healthcare contexts outside major cities, a doctor may speak Trasianka rather than pure Russian or pure Belarusian. For a deaf patient lip-reading, the phonological unpredictability of Trasianka — which language's sound patterns are active right now? — removes the linguistic anchoring that makes lip-reading even partially effective.

Sign language not recognised

  • Belarusian Sign Language lacks official legal recognition
  • Belarusian Sign Language is not officially recognised by the state. Deaf Belarusians navigating healthcare, education, and public services do so without legal entitlement to sign language interpretation. In clinical settings, this means communication support is discretionary rather than guaranteed — dependent on the goodwill and resources of individual facilities rather than a legal right the patient can invoke.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss in Belarus: masks, tablets, and a system that needed emergency solutions

Belarus has an estimated 10,000 hearing-impaired people according to WHO figures, in a country of approximately 9.4 million — a community that navigated daily life in healthcare and public settings with limited formal communication support even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Under normal circumstances, many deaf Belarusians relied on lip-reading and, when available, sign language interpreters who accompanied them to medical appointments. This system had no structural redundancy: it depended on the interpreter being present, the doctor being willing to slow down, and — crucially — the patient being able to see the speaker's face.

When mask mandates were introduced in healthcare settings during the pandemic, the core mechanism of deaf communication in Belarusian clinics broke down entirely. The WHO Country Office in Belarus documented this crisis and, in 2021, trialled a tablet-based sign-to-speech translation service to compensate for the lip-reading gap that masks had created. Following a successful pilot, 25 tablets were purchased for translation offices across Belarus. The episode revealed a system so dependent on one fragile access point — visible lips — that a standard public health measure could eliminate communication access for an entire community overnight.

The deeper structural problem is that Belarusian Sign Language lacks official legal recognition, meaning there is no statutory obligation for healthcare facilities to provide communication support. Deaf Belarusians who attend a polyclinic in Minsk or a regional hospital are not legally entitled to an interpreter — access depends on the initiative of the facility or the ability of the patient to arrange their own support. In a country where civil society has faced systematic restrictions since 2020, deaf advocacy organisations have limited capacity to push for the legal recognition that would change this. Captio AI captions Russian and Belarusian in real time at any palіklіnіka or balnіtsa, so every patient has immediate access to their doctor's words without relying on a tablet pilot or an interpreter that may not arrive.

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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

"At the polyclinic in Minsk every doctor speaks Russian, not Belarusian. I lip-read Belarusian at home but clinical appointments are in a different language entirely. Captio AI captions Russian in real time — I follow my appointments in full for the first time."

Volha Lukashenko 🇧🇾
volha.l***@gmail.com
Profound deafness since childhood, Minsk

"During the pandemic, masks made lip-reading impossible and no one could find a sign language interpreter quickly. Captio AI captions the audio — mask or no mask, fast speech or slow, I read every word the doctor says."

Аляксей Корань 🇧🇾
aliaksei.k***@gmail.com
Severe bilateral hearing loss, Hrodna

"My doctor in Brest uses Trasianka — a mix of Belarusian and Russian that I can never predict. Captio AI captions whatever language is spoken and I follow every prescription instruction without guessing."

Наталля Іваноўская 🇧🇾
natalia.i***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, uses hearing aid, Brest

"The apteka pharmacist speaks quickly and gives contraindication warnings I always miss. Captio AI captions every word as the pharmacist speaks. I now leave the pharmacy knowing exactly what I should not combine."

Сяргей Ляшэнка 🇧🇾
siarhei.l***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Vitsebsk

"At the polyclinic in Minsk every doctor speaks Russian, not Belarusian. I lip-read Belarusian at home but clinical appointments are in a different language entirely. Captio AI captions Russian in real time — I follow my appointments in full for the first time."

Volha Lukashenko 🇧🇾
volha.l***@gmail.com
Profound deafness since childhood, Minsk

"During the pandemic, masks made lip-reading impossible and no one could find a sign language interpreter quickly. Captio AI captions the audio — mask or no mask, fast speech or slow, I read every word the doctor says."

Аляксей Корань 🇧🇾
aliaksei.k***@gmail.com
Severe bilateral hearing loss, Hrodna

"My doctor in Brest uses Trasianka — a mix of Belarusian and Russian that I can never predict. Captio AI captions whatever language is spoken and I follow every prescription instruction without guessing."

Наталля Іваноўская 🇧🇾
natalia.i***@gmail.com
Moderate hearing loss, uses hearing aid, Brest

"The apteka pharmacist speaks quickly and gives contraindication warnings I always miss. Captio AI captions every word as the pharmacist speaks. I now leave the pharmacy knowing exactly what I should not combine."

Сяргей Ляшэнка 🇧🇾
siarhei.l***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Vitsebsk

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Understand your diagnosis in Belarusian.

Captio AI is free to start

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