Galician live captions and productivity tool for doctor appointments

Spain has approximately 1,064,000 people who are deaf or have a significant hearing disability — 2.3% of the population. The EuroTrak survey found that around 10% of people in Spain have some degree of hearing loss, representing five million Spaniards. In Galicia — a community of approximately 2.7 million people in Spain's northwest — the elderly demographic skew is pronounced: Galicia has one of Spain's oldest populations, and age-related hearing loss is correspondingly prevalent. For Galician-speaking deaf and hard of hearing residents, the language dimension adds a specific complication: Spain's 2007 sign language law (Law 27/2007) recognises Spanish Sign Language but does not separately address Galician Sign Language, meaning that deaf Galicians who seek sign language support typically receive Spanish Sign Language interpretation even if Galician is their preferred spoken language.

In practice, the sign language interpreter workforce available in Galicia is small relative to the population needing support. Deaf Galicians attending healthcare appointments at a centro de saúde or Complexo Hospitalario face the same interpreter availability constraints found across Spain — insufficient interpreter numbers for routine appointments, no guarantee of interpreter presence for urgent care, and a system where the formal legal right to sign language access is not matched by the infrastructure to deliver it. COVID-19 research published in PMC found that Spanish people with hearing disabilities reported systematic inaccessibility of public health communication during the pandemic, with Galicia — operating largely in Galician — experiencing a double layer of inaccessibility for Galician-preferring deaf people.

The linguistic dimension is important because clinical appointments in Galicia may be conducted in Galician, in Spanish, or in a mixture of both — and the phonological features of Galician (gheada, seseo, Portuguese-influenced sounds) differ enough from Castilian Spanish that a deaf patient who lip-reads Spanish does not automatically lip-read Galician well. Captio AI captions Galician and Spanish in real time at any centro de saúde or hospital in Galicia, so every patient — regardless of which language their doctor uses — receives the words directly.