Serbian live captions and productivity tool for everyday conversations

WHO estimates place Serbia's hearing-impaired population at over 400,000 people — roughly 6% of a population of 7 million — consistent with European regional averages. For deaf and hard of hearing Serbians, daily life revolves around settings built entirely on oral exchange: the kafana, the pijaca, the neighbourhood courtyard, the family slava. These are not marginal settings — they are the central institutions of Serbian social life. To be excluded from them by hearing loss is to be excluded from the structure of how Serbian community works.

Serbian Sign Language was legally recognised in 2005, making Serbia one of the earlier Balkan states to take this step. However, certified interpreters remain heavily concentrated in Belgrade, leaving deaf Serbians outside the capital without practical access to formal interpretation in any everyday setting. The kafana — which combines live music with loud conversation — represents a particular barrier: the single most socially important setting in Serbian culture is also one of the most acoustically impenetrable environments for anyone with hearing loss.

Research from the European Union of the Deaf and national disability organisations consistently documents that the formal recognition of sign language in the Western Balkans has not translated to everyday accessibility infrastructure. Informal daily settings — the market, the café, the neighbourhood conversation — carry no legal obligation for captioning or signing and are therefore entirely inaccessible to deaf Serbians without a hearing companion. The slava — Serbia's most culturally specific annual family gathering — remains a noise-filled event that deaf family members observe rather than participate in. Captio AI captions Serbian speech in real time — including fast Belgrade colloquial Serbian and Ijekavian varieties — so the kafana, the market, and the family table are no longer conversations you have to sit outside of.