Latvian live captions and productivity tool for lectures
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Latvian lectures
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Latvian speakers.
Follow the lecture as it happens
- Captions appear word by word while the lecturer is still speaking
- Works in lecture halls, seminars, and tutorials
- No setup — place the phone on your desk and start
- Any accent, any pace
For courses in another language
- Captions and translates in real time
- For international students or foreign-language courses
- 60+ languages, no switching
- Follow the lecture in the language you read best
Full transcript to study from
- Record the lecture and upload it for a complete written transcript
- Searchable, copyable, shareable
- Review at your own pace after class
- Works on any lecture recording
Key points extracted automatically
- Important concepts and takeaways pulled from any transcript
- Organised into sections — not one continuous block
- Useful for revision and exam preparation
- Works on any saved lecture transcript
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Large lecture halls at the University of Latvia and Riga Technical University — where courses are delivered in Latvian by lecturers from across the country, against a Latvian-Russian bilingual academic culture.
Seminars and tutorials in Latvian departments — small group discussions where students debate in Latvian, with informal language switching to Russian in corridor conversations that sometimes continues into seminar rooms.
Online and recorded lectures on Latvian university platforms — digital content where Latvian's three-way tonal contrast must be resolved entirely by the transcription system.
Study groups in Riga and Daugavpils student accommodation — peer study in Latvian, with students from Latgalian-speaking eastern Latvia bringing different vowel systems and dialect-influenced speech into group discussion.
International courses at Latvian universities — EU-funded or Erasmus programmes where visiting scholars deliver presentations in Latvian with non-standard tonal patterns, or in English with Latvian Q&A sessions.
Guest speakers and public academics at Latvian cultural institutions — researchers and public figures giving talks at the University of Latvia or the national library, often broadcast without real-time captions.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
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Built for the pace and pressure of a real lecture
Follow without splitting your attention
Lip-reading and note-taking at the same time is an impossible cognitive load. Captio AI handles the following so you can direct all your attention to understanding what is being said.
Captions while the lecturer is still speaking
Words appear on your screen as they are said — not after the sentence ends. You stay in sync with the lecture rather than always being a beat behind.
Works in any lecture setting
Lecture halls, seminar rooms, online classes, study groups. Place the phone on your desk, point it toward the audio source, and Captio AI handles the rest.
A full transcript to study from
Record the lecture and upload it to Audio Transcription after class. Get a complete written record you can search, annotate, and revise from — at your own pace.
60+ languages
For international students, students studying abroad, or courses taught in a second language. Captio AI captions or translates in real time with no manual setup.
No advance notice needed
Official university captioning requires booking in advance and is not available for every session. Captio AI works for any lecture, any time, with no prior arrangement.
Why Latvian is hard to understand
Three-way tonal contrast
- Latvian distinguishes three pitch contours — level, falling, and broken tone — all invisible on the lips
- Latvian has a lexical pitch accent system with a three-way tonal contrast among level tone, falling tone, and the distinctive 'broken tone' — a falling-rising contour with a creaky, laryngealised quality produced in the larynx. All three tones occur on the same syllable types with identical consonants and vowels. A deaf student at the University of Latvia in Riga sees the same lip shapes for words distinguished only by their pitch contour — a distinction entirely acoustic and entirely invisible.
Phonemic vowel length
- Latvian vowel length is phonemic with a 2.5:1 duration ratio — no visible correlate
- Latvian has a vowel length system where long vowels are approximately 2.5 times the duration of short vowels, distinguishing word meaning throughout the vocabulary. At lecture pace, this duration ratio compresses significantly, and a lip-reading deaf student has no way to visually detect whether the vowel they see is the short or long phoneme — jaw aperture and lip shape are the same for both.
Latgalian divergence
- Latgalian — Eastern Latvian — has a substantially different vowel system and tonal patterns
- Latgalian is an eastern Latvian variety with its own codified written form and a different phonological inventory from standard Latvian — different diphthongs, different tonal categories, and different vowel mergers. At Daugavpils University or in east Latvian lecture settings, a deaf student calibrated to Riga-standard Latvian encounters a systematically different phonological system.
Latvian–Russian code-switching
- Urban Latvian academic speech shifts between Latvian and Russian
- Latvia has a substantial Russian-speaking minority, and in Riga's universities informal discussion often switches between Latvian and Russian mid-conversation. In some faculty settings, older lecturers may spontaneously switch to Russian when citing Russian-language sources. A deaf student must process two completely different phonological systems simultaneously with no reliable visual signal when the language changes.
Syllabic sonorants
- Latvian uses syllabic sonorants that form syllable peaks with minimal lip movement
- Latvian allows syllabic sonorant consonants in certain morphological contexts — a sonorant producing a vowel-like syllable peak with no associated lip shape creates a visual gap. The syllable exists acoustically but the lip movement that usually signals a syllable nucleus is absent. In fast academic speech these syllabic sonorants compress further, and a deaf student misses entire syllables in what looks like a short word.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store32,000 Latvians at risk of social exclusion due to deafness — and an EU-funded programme designed to fill a gap that persisted for two decades after independence
The Latvian Association of the Deaf (LAD) has identified approximately 32,000 people throughout Latvia as potentially at risk of social exclusion due to deafness or severely impaired hearing. The European Commission's Regional Policy programme in Latvia noted that a comprehensive service offering specifically dedicated to the socioeconomic integration of this group had been largely absent — a gap addressed only from 2011 onwards when new EU-funded centres were opened. This means that for the first two decades of Latvian independence after 1991, deaf and hard of hearing Latvians navigated education and employment with minimal systematic institutional support.
Latvian Sign Language (LZV) is an independent language used by approximately 3,000 to 5,000 deaf and hard of hearing people in Latvia. It is not constitutionally recognised at the same level as Latvian, and academic sign language interpretation for university-level content remains scarce. The EU-funded integration centres opened in 2011 focus on social and employment needs — not on academic content. A deaf university student in Latvia seeking specialist interpreter support for a STEM or law lecture faces essentially no systematic provision.
Latvia has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but compliance with CRPD education provisions has been inconsistent in higher education. For a deaf student at the University of Latvia in Riga navigating lectures in Latvian with its three-way tonal pitch accent and phonemic vowel length — neither of which leaves any visible lip-reading trace — Captio AI provides real-time captions that the country's interpreter infrastructure cannot yet match.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat you hear stays with you.
Gone the moment it ends
Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.
Not a product
Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.
Not used to train anything
What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"Latvian broken tone — a creaky, laryngealized pitch pattern — you cannot see it at all. It distinguishes word meanings. Captio AI captures the tonal contrast acoustically. Riga lectures are accessible now."
"Vowel length in Latvian is phonemic — short vs. long — but the lip shapes look identical at speed. I was guessing. Captio AI shows the right word every time. RTU lectures are finally clear."
"Latgalian varieties — completely different diphthong system from Riga Latvian. Captio AI handles Latgalian speech without any calibration from me. Daugavpils courses are accessible."
"Latvian-Russian code-switching in seminars — two completely different phonological systems. Captio AI handles both. I follow the full seminar whatever language the discussion is in."
"Latvian broken tone — a creaky, laryngealized pitch pattern — you cannot see it at all. It distinguishes word meanings. Captio AI captures the tonal contrast acoustically. Riga lectures are accessible now."
"Vowel length in Latvian is phonemic — short vs. long — but the lip shapes look identical at speed. I was guessing. Captio AI shows the right word every time. RTU lectures are finally clear."
"Latgalian varieties — completely different diphthong system from Riga Latvian. Captio AI handles Latgalian speech without any calibration from me. Daugavpils courses are accessible."
"Latvian-Russian code-switching in seminars — two completely different phonological systems. Captio AI handles both. I follow the full seminar whatever language the discussion is in."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Follow every lecture in Latvian.
Captio AI is free to start
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