Bulgarian live captions and productivity tool for group settings

The Union of the Deaf in Bulgaria, which has operated since the post-war period, has approximately 6,500 members organised across 12 regional organisations in cities including Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Pleven, and Haskovo, with 42 territorial organisations subordinated to them. The Union maintains Bulgaria's only Centre for Rehabilitation of Hearing and Speech for children up to three years of age, with offices in Sofia, Varna, Pleven, and Haskovo — reflecting the geographic unevenness of access to early intervention services. The Global Burden of Disease 2019 study estimated that hearing loss is the most prevalent cause of years lived with disability across Eastern Europe, with age-standardised prevalence rising steadily over the past three decades as populations age.

Bulgaria's post-1989 economic transition created severe pressures on disability services that were slow to recover. A Scandinavian disability research institute report documented that people with disabilities in Bulgaria experienced significant reductions in social protection and services during the transition period, with institutional care remaining the primary model and community-based services underdeveloped. For deaf and hard-of-hearing Bulgarians, the gap between the Union's advocacy and the lived reality of daily social access is wide: sign language interpretation is available for formal institutional contexts but is absent from family gatherings, community chitalishte events, and the informal social settings where exclusion is most keenly felt.

Captio AI captions Bulgarian conversation in real time on a phone screen — so a deaf family member at a Коледа dinner or a multigenerational gathering in Sofia, Plovdiv, or Varna can follow every story and toast as it is spoken, across whichever Bulgarian variety or mix of languages is at the table.