Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Arabic live captions and productivity tool for traveling

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Captio AI app showing live captions

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Use Cases

Every situation covered

Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.

✈️Airports and boarding

At Dubai International, Cairo's Terminal 3, or Riyadh's King Khalid, announcements come in Arabic — fast, formal, and often with local dialect colouring. Captio AI captions so you catch every gate change.

🚂Train stations and public transport

Cairo Metro, Riyadh Metro, or Casablanca Tramway staff communicate entirely in Arabic. Captio AI captions ticket counter conversations and platform instructions in real time.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Amman or Abu Dhabi speaking colloquial Levantine or Gulf Arabic. Captio AI captions the check-in exchange so you follow room details and local tips without asking for repeats.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking for directions in a Marrakech medina or from a local in Beirut's streets. Rapid dialect Arabic — Captio AI captions and translates in real time.

🛃Customs and immigration

Immigration and customs officers at Arab country borders speak quickly in formal Arabic. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Petra, the Pyramids, or the souks of Marrakech delivering Arabic commentary. Captio AI captions so you follow the narrative through every historical site.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Arabic
83.8%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Captio AI in everyday use
Why Captio AI

Built for a world that announces everything by sound

Captions any spoken exchange in real time

Airport staff, hotel receptionists, taxi drivers, tour guides. Hold the phone toward whoever is speaking and read the captions — in any setting, in any country.

60+ languages — no language barrier

Live Translator captions and translates in real time. They speak their language — you read in yours. For every country, every language, no manual setup between interactions.

Works anywhere with a data connection

Wi-Fi or mobile data. A local SIM or roaming plan keeps Captio AI running in any country — airports, hotels, rural areas, and everywhere in between.

Handles travel environments

Noisy airports, busy stations, echoing hotel lobbies. Captio AI is built for real environments — not quiet controlled rooms. It captions through the ambient noise of travel.

Discreet in any public setting

Hold the phone or place it near the speaker. Captio AI runs quietly and draws no attention — useful in customs, immigration, and any formal travel interaction where discretion matters.

Private by default

Travel conversations — customs declarations, hotel bookings, personal exchanges — are never stored or shared. Audio is processed in real time and discarded immediately.

Arabic

Why Arabic is hard to understand

Pharyngeal consonants

  • Sounds produced deep in the throat
  • Arabic has two phonemes produced deep in the throat: /ħ/ (ح) and /ʕ/ (ع). These sounds produce almost no visible lip or jaw movement — to a deaf traveler watching a hotel receptionist or immigration officer in Cairo or Dubai, these consonants are entirely invisible, yet they carry critical meaning in common travel words.

Emphatic consonants

  • Pharyngealization invisible at lip level
  • Arabic distinguishes plain from emphatic (pharyngealized) consonants across four pairs: /s/-/sˤ/, /d/-/dˤ/, /t/-/tˤ/, /ð/-/ðˤ/. At the lip level these sounds look virtually identical — yet they produce completely different words. A deaf traveler at a customs counter cannot distinguish emphatic from plain variants from lip shapes alone.

Diglossia

  • MSA on signs, dialect spoken everywhere
  • Modern Standard Arabic is what appears on airport signs and official documents. The Arabic actually spoken by a Moroccan customs officer, an Egyptian hotel receptionist, or a Gulf airline crew member is a regional dialect — Darija, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic — that can differ so radically from MSA that even fluent speakers across regions struggle with mutual intelligibility.

Dialect diversity

  • Levantine, Gulf, Egyptian, Maghrebi — all different on the lips
  • The Arabic dialects a traveler encounters across a single Arab-world trip can span four mutually distinct spoken varieties. Cairo taxi drivers, Beirut hotel staff, Dubai immigration officers, and Casablanca market vendors all speak recognisably different Arabic — each presenting a new lip-reading challenge.

Uvular consonants

  • Back-of-throat sounds at the counter
  • Arabic /q/ (ق) and /ʁ/ (غ) are produced at the uvula, far back in the oral cavity — they produce no visible movement at the lips. Yet /q/ appears in essential travel words across dialects. A deaf traveler watching a customs officer's lips at a Gulf airport sees nothing where the most distinctive consonants are being made.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility across the Arab world

The Arab world carries a significant hearing loss burden, compounded by structural barriers to diagnosis and support. According to the WHO World Report on Hearing, approximately 90% of people with disabling hearing loss globally live in low- and middle-income countries — a category that encompasses most of the Arab world outside the Gulf states. In many Arab countries, audiological services are concentrated in capital cities, leaving hearing-impaired populations in rural and secondary cities with limited access to diagnosis, hearing aids, or rehabilitation. Studies across Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco have documented elevated rates of autosomal recessive hearing loss linked to consanguineous marriage practices in some communities.

Sign language recognition remains limited across the Arab world. No unified Arab sign language exists — each country has developed its own, with limited mutual intelligibility across borders. For a deaf traveler from one Arab country visiting another, the local deaf community's communication system may be unreadable. In many Arab states, disability policy frameworks for deaf and hard of hearing citizens remain underdeveloped, with access to public services — including travel infrastructure — rarely designed to serve them. Airport PA systems, immigration desks, and hotel check-ins across the region are designed around spoken Arabic.

Captio AI captions Arabic speech in real time — Gulf, Levantine, Egyptian, or Maghrebi — so a deaf traveler navigating a Gulf airport, a Jordanian customs desk, or a Moroccan hotel follows every exchange without depending on audio infrastructure that was not built with them in mind.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
Privacy

What 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.

100% PRIVATE

Private by default

Download on theApp Store
Reviews

People love Captio AI

"Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, and Moroccan Darija are all different on the lips. I used to prepare for each country separately and still struggled. Captio AI captions each dialect directly — I stopped preparing and started traveling."

Layla H. 🇯🇴
layla.h***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Amman — traveler across the Arab world

"Immigration officers at Riyadh airport speak formal Arabic very quickly. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and read every question on screen. I answered correctly the first time. That used to be the most stressful part of every trip."

Khalid N. 🇸🇦
khalid.n***@gmail.com
Deaf, Riyadh — business traveler

"Beirut hotel receptionists speak fast Levantine Arabic mixed with French. Captio AI captured both languages. The check-in conversation became something I could actually follow rather than guess at."

Nour F. 🇱🇧
nour.f***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Beirut — tourist

"Moroccan Darija is difficult even for other Arabic speakers. Tour guides in Marrakech switch between Darija, Modern Standard Arabic, and French. Captio AI kept up with all three. For the first time on a Moroccan trip I followed the full tour."

Fatima B. 🇲🇦
fatima.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Casablanca — solo traveler

"Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, and Moroccan Darija are all different on the lips. I used to prepare for each country separately and still struggled. Captio AI captions each dialect directly — I stopped preparing and started traveling."

Layla H. 🇯🇴
layla.h***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Amman — traveler across the Arab world

"Immigration officers at Riyadh airport speak formal Arabic very quickly. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and read every question on screen. I answered correctly the first time. That used to be the most stressful part of every trip."

Khalid N. 🇸🇦
khalid.n***@gmail.com
Deaf, Riyadh — business traveler

"Beirut hotel receptionists speak fast Levantine Arabic mixed with French. Captio AI captured both languages. The check-in conversation became something I could actually follow rather than guess at."

Nour F. 🇱🇧
nour.f***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Beirut — tourist

"Moroccan Darija is difficult even for other Arabic speakers. Tour guides in Marrakech switch between Darija, Modern Standard Arabic, and French. Captio AI kept up with all three. For the first time on a Moroccan trip I followed the full tour."

Fatima B. 🇲🇦
fatima.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Casablanca — solo traveler

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Arabic.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store