Latvian live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations

The Latvian Association of the Deaf estimates 32,000 people throughout Latvia are at risk of social exclusion due to deafness or severely impaired hearing. Applying the European self-reported hearing loss prevalence of 10.8% for Latvia to a population of approximately 1.85 million gives around 200,000 people with any degree of hearing loss. For those with significant hearing difficulty, daily life means the tirgus vendor whose call you cannot catch, the kiosk counter where the glass makes lip-reading impossible, the family Jāņi gathering where the conversation carries on without you.

Latvian Sign Language gained legal recognition through Latvia's Official Language Law, effective from 2000. In 2011, two support centres were opened — one in Riga, one in Liepāja — giving practical sign language access to two cities in a country spanning over 64,000 square kilometres. For the majority of Latvia's deaf and hard of hearing population outside these cities, informal daily life — the local tirgus, the rural post office, the family table — has no accommodation.

Latvia's population is ageing and declining in rural areas, with hearing loss rising as the population ages. The infrastructure supporting deaf Latvians in informal everyday settings has not expanded to match. Captio AI captions Latvian speech in real time so the tirgus, the kiosk counter, and the family table are no longer settings you have to navigate alone.