Albanian live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations

The 2011 Albanian Census identified 5,351 people aged 15 and over with profound hearing impairment — though this figure substantially underestimates the true number due to limited disability registration in rural areas. Albanian Sign Language was legally recognised in 2014, but the language itself only began developing after the collapse of communism in 1990 — when deaf Albanians were first able to gather and communicate collectively. Before that, the communist state had actively discouraged deaf community formation. AlbSL is therefore a very young language that still lacks signs for many everyday concepts. For deaf Albanians, this means navigating daily life with a sign language that sometimes cannot fully describe the conversation they are in.

Research published in 2015 on deaf people in Albania documented systematic barriers: limited access to information, limited employment opportunities, and restricted social participation. The Albanian National Association of the Deaf (ANAD) — the only national deaf advocacy organisation — provides interpreter training, sign language awareness, and advocacy, but covers a country of nearly 3 million with very limited resources. Outside Tirana, certified sign language interpreters are essentially absent from everyday settings. The kafe, the market, the government counter, the neighbourhood conversation — none of these carry any accessibility provision.

Albania has one of the largest emigration rates per capita in Europe, with major communities in Italy and Greece. This diaspora means many deaf Albanians live in bilingual Italian-Albanian or Greek-Albanian environments where everyday conversation switches unpredictably between two languages. A 2020 ResearchGate publication examining AlbSL noted that interpreter training and standardisation remain critical priorities — meaning that even the sign language itself is not yet stable enough to rely on in all everyday contexts. Captio AI captions Albanian speech in real time — including Gheg and Tosk varieties and Albanian-Italian or Albanian-Greek mixed settings — so the kafe conversation, the market errand, and the family gathering are no longer settings you navigate alone.