Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Bosnian 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 dom zdravlja (health centre) in Sarajevo, Mostar, or a smaller grad, your doktor explains symptoms and treatment in Bosnian. Captio AI captions every word so you follow the full consultation.

🔬Specialist consultations

At a specialist appointment at Klinički centar Univerziteta u Sarajevu or a regional bolnica, medical terms arrive in Bosnian mixed with Latinate vocabulary. Captio AI captions both in real time.

💊Pharmacy conversations

At the apoteka (pharmacy), the farmaceut explains dosage and drug interactions quickly. Point your phone toward them and read the instructions as they speak.

🦷Dental appointments

At the zubar (dental clinic), 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 psiholog or psihijatar, sensitive conversations require full comprehension. Captio AI captions the full session so you engage without gaps.

🚑Emergency and urgent care

At the hitna pomoć (emergency department), staff speak quickly under pressure. Open Captio AI and read their instructions in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Bosnian
93.4%

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.

Bosnian

Why Bosnian is hard to understand

Four-tone pitch accent

  • Bosnian's four pitch tones change meaning but are invisible on the lips
  • Bosnian shares the Serbo-Croatian pitch accent system — four tones: short falling, short rising, long falling, and long rising. These tones are phonemically significant throughout clinical vocabulary, and none produce any visible lip movement difference. For a deaf or hard of hearing patient lip-reading a Bosnian doctor, the tonal layer that distinguishes meaning simply does not appear on the speaker's face.

Ijekavian pronunciation

  • Bosnian Ijekavian forms differ from other ex-Yugoslav varieties
  • Standard Bosnian uses Ijekavian pronunciation — the historical yat vowel realises as 'ije' or 'je': 'mlijeko' (milk), 'liječnik' (doctor). This distinguishes Bosnian from Serbian Ekavian forms and creates different lip shapes for identical clinical concepts. A deaf patient familiar with Serbian Ekavian or accustomed to Croatian Ijekavian (which differs from Bosnian Ijekavian in subtle but audible ways) faces an additional layer of phonological uncertainty at a Bosnian clinical appointment.

Ottoman medical loanwords

  • Turkish and Arabic loanwords appear in Bosnian clinical speech
  • Bosnian has a significant Ottoman heritage in its vocabulary — Turkish and Arabic loanwords that appear less frequently in Croatian or Serbian. In informal clinical speech in Bosnia, patients and some older medical staff may use Turkish-origin words for body parts, ailments, and remedies alongside the formal Latinate clinical vocabulary. A deaf patient must lip-read across a more diverse vocabulary pool than in closely related languages.

Distinctive h phoneme

  • Bosnian preserves the /h/ phoneme where Serbian drops it
  • One of the distinguishing features of Bosnian pronunciation is the preservation of the /h/ phoneme in words where Serbian and Croatian speakers often drop it colloquially. 'Kahva' (coffee), 'lahko' (easy) — the h is pronounced in Bosnian. In clinical speech, this means words that a deaf patient recognises from Serbian or Croatian lip-shapes appear with an additional consonant in Bosnian that changes the expected visual pattern.

Fast casual register

  • Bosnian informal clinical speech compresses and elides at high speed
  • In conversational post-diagnosis speech — the part where a doctor explains what happens next informally — Bosnian speech rate increases, unstressed syllables reduce, and words merge across boundaries. A doctor who was deliberate during the formal diagnosis becomes faster and less distinct once the clinical vocabulary gives way to procedural instructions. This shift from formal to informal register is where a deaf patient following lip shapes is most likely to lose the thread.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss in Bosnia and Herzegovina: recognition in 2009, access still thin on the ground

Bosnia and Herzegovina formally recognised sign language rights in 2009 — granting deaf people the same language rights with sign language as hearing people have with oral language, mandating government provision of interpreters for dealings with public bodies, and requiring government television broadcasts to be translated into sign language. This recognition, documented by the World Federation of the Deaf, was a significant legal step. In practice, the implementation of these rights reflects the broader governance challenge of a country divided into two administratively separate entities — the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska — each with its own institutions and varying levels of implementation capacity.

A study of 1,044 hard of hearing and deaf persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina found 455 registered at employment offices and 589 receiving financial aid from social care centres — a picture of a community heavily dependent on state welfare support with limited employment integration. Professional rehabilitation programmes have been proposed to improve the situation, but deaf Bosnians continue to face the same structural barriers seen across the former Yugoslav space: small interpreter workforces, limited sign language education availability outside major urban centres, and healthcare settings where communication support is not systematically provided.

In clinical settings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the experience of a deaf patient at a dom zdravlja in a smaller town means attending without an interpreter and navigating a medical consultation in a language with a pitch accent system that is invisible on the lips, Ottoman-heritage vocabulary that widens the lexical range beyond Latinate norms, and a Ijekavian pronunciation that may differ from whatever Serbian or Croatian forms the patient previously encountered. Captio AI captions Bosnian in real time at any dom zdravlja or klinički centar across both entities, so every patient receives their doctor's words directly.

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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 internist at Klinički centar Sarajevo uses all four pitch tones throughout the appointment — I can see none of them on his lips. Captio AI captions every tonal distinction in text and I leave understanding my full diagnosis."

Amra Hodžić 🇧🇦
amra.h***@gmail.com
Severe sensorineural hearing loss, Sarajevo

"The Bosnian h phoneme in medical vocabulary — 'lahko', 'kahva', words with a preserved h — changed what I expected to see on people's lips. Captio AI captures the audio exactly and I read what was actually said, not what I predicted."

Edin Begović 🇧🇦
edin.b***@gmail.com
Profound deafness, uses hearing aid, Tuzla

"The apoteka in Mostar — five different medicines and the pharmacist ran through interactions at full speed. I held up my phone and read the captions. I knew exactly what to take and what to avoid before I left the counter."

Lejla Muratović 🇧🇦
lejla.m***@gmail.com
Moderate bilateral hearing loss, Mostar

"Interpreters are available in Sarajevo but not in Banja Luka for regular appointments. Captio AI means I don't travel to Sarajevo for every consultation — I go to my local dom zdravlja and read the doctor's words in real time."

Mirza Kovačević 🇧🇦
mirza.k***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Banja Luka

"My internist at Klinički centar Sarajevo uses all four pitch tones throughout the appointment — I can see none of them on his lips. Captio AI captions every tonal distinction in text and I leave understanding my full diagnosis."

Amra Hodžić 🇧🇦
amra.h***@gmail.com
Severe sensorineural hearing loss, Sarajevo

"The Bosnian h phoneme in medical vocabulary — 'lahko', 'kahva', words with a preserved h — changed what I expected to see on people's lips. Captio AI captures the audio exactly and I read what was actually said, not what I predicted."

Edin Begović 🇧🇦
edin.b***@gmail.com
Profound deafness, uses hearing aid, Tuzla

"The apoteka in Mostar — five different medicines and the pharmacist ran through interactions at full speed. I held up my phone and read the captions. I knew exactly what to take and what to avoid before I left the counter."

Lejla Muratović 🇧🇦
lejla.m***@gmail.com
Moderate bilateral hearing loss, Mostar

"Interpreters are available in Sarajevo but not in Banja Luka for regular appointments. Captio AI means I don't travel to Sarajevo for every consultation — I go to my local dom zdravlja and read the doctor's words in real time."

Mirza Kovačević 🇧🇦
mirza.k***@gmail.com
Age-related hearing loss, Banja Luka

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Understand your diagnosis in Bosnian.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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