Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Bulgarian 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

Gate changes and boarding calls at Sofia Airport (SOF) or Varna Airport come in Bulgarian and English. Captio AI captions both languages so you catch gate numbers and boarding times without missing a departure.

🚂Train stations and public transport

Bulgarian State Railways (BDŽ) trains announce stops in Bulgarian. At Sofia Central Station, Captio AI captions the ticket window exchange and platform PA in real time — platform number, departure time, and carriage.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Sofia's city centre or in Bansko explaining check-in details and local tips in Bulgarian. Place Captio AI on the desk and follow the full conversation without asking for anything repeated.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking for directions near Sofia's Alexander Nevsky Cathedral or navigating the Sofia Metro. Fast Bulgarian from locals and taxi drivers — Captio AI captions their reply so you find your way.

🛃Customs and immigration

Bulgarian border control and customs at Sofia Airport speak quickly in formal Bulgarian and English. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately and confidently.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at the Rila Monastery, Boyana Church in Sofia, or the Plovdiv Old Town delivering Bulgarian commentary on medieval and Thracian history. Captio AI captions in real time so you follow every detail.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Bulgarian
94.4%

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.

Bulgarian

Why Bulgarian is hard to understand

The yer vowel /ə/

  • Bulgarian's central schwa-like vowel ъ produces almost no visible lip movement
  • Bulgarian has a central vowel /ə/ (written ъ — called yer) that appears throughout common vocabulary, including many travel-critical words. This vowel is produced with minimal lip rounding or spreading — no distinctive lip shape. At Sofia Airport or a hotel desk in Plovdiv, a Bulgarian speaker's yer vowel is phonemically active throughout their speech, but a deaf traveler reading lips receives almost no visual information about when and where it appears.

Voicing assimilation

  • Whether a Bulgarian consonant is voiced or voiceless depends on what follows — not visible
  • Bulgarian has regressive voicing assimilation: consonants become voiced before voiced consonants and devoice before voiceless ones. A word's pronunciation changes depending on its phonological context, creating dynamic variation that a deaf traveler cannot anticipate. Voiced/voiceless pairs like p/b, t/d, k/g, f/v look identical on the speaker's lips, and which one arrives depends on the next word — a rule invisible in face-to-face communication.

Eastern vs Western dialects

  • Western Bulgarian and Sofia standard have different vowel systems at every hotel counter
  • Western Bulgarian dialects (Vidin, Vratsa, Kyustendil) preserve the Old Bulgarian vowel distinction between /ă/ and /a/ and use 'e' where Eastern Bulgarian uses 'ya'. Sofia standard Bulgarian is Eastern, but travellers crossing to the western districts or visiting Vidin near the Romanian border encounter noticeably different vowel realizations from hotel and train station staff.

Palatalization in fast speech

  • Soft consonants have a secondary palatal articulation — invisible from the front
  • Bulgarian has palatalization of certain consonants before front vowels, especially in natural informal speech. This secondary palatal articulation changes how consonants sound but not how they look on the lips. At a Bulgarian customs counter or a Black Sea resort hotel desk, palatalized consonants arrive with the same lip shape as their non-palatalized counterparts.

Bulgarian-English code-switching in tourism

  • Black Sea and ski resort staff switch between Bulgarian and English mid-sentence
  • Bulgaria's major tourist destinations — the Black Sea coast (Sunny Beach, Varna, Burgas) and ski resorts (Bansko, Borovets) — have English-speaking staff who switch between Bulgarian and English mid-sentence. A deaf traveler reading Bulgarian lips at a Bansko ski rental desk or a Varna hotel reception must suddenly switch phoneme systems when English arrives — without any visible signal.

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Bulgaria

Bulgaria carries the hearing loss burden typical of Eastern Europe, where prevalence is estimated at 1.35 times higher than Western Europe according to WHO regional data. Neonatal hearing screening data from Bulgaria recorded a prevalence rate of 1.63 per 1,000 for permanent bilateral hearing loss of ≥40 dB — among the higher European neonatal figures. The GBD 2019 study estimated that 1.57 billion people globally had hearing loss, with the Eastern European region carrying a disproportionate share relative to population. Against Bulgaria's population of approximately 6.5 million, these figures suggest hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians navigating daily life with hearing difficulty, many without access to hearing aids or audiological rehabilitation.

Bulgaria's travel infrastructure — including Sofia Airport (handling over 7 million passengers annually), BDŽ's intercity rail network, and city tram and metro networks in Sofia and Plovdiv — communicates critical travel information through spoken Bulgarian PA announcements without real-time captioning. Bulgaria's major tourist sites — the Rila Monastery (a UNESCO World Heritage site), Plovdiv Old Town, Boyana Church, and the Thracian tombs near Kazanlak — attract growing numbers of international visitors; guided tours are conducted verbally in Bulgarian without captioning infrastructure. For deaf and hard of hearing travelers at Sofia Airport or on BDŽ trains, all platform changes and boarding information is audio-only.

Captio AI captions Bulgarian in real time — whether a platform announcement at Sofia Central Station, an immigration officer at Sofia Airport, or a guide at the Rila Monastery — so a deaf traveler in Bulgaria follows every instruction and question without depending on audio infrastructure built without 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

"BDŽ platform announcements at Sofia Central come in fast Bulgarian and the echo is terrible. Captio AI near the speaker showed the platform number and departure time on screen. I've stopped guessing which platform."

Georgi P. 🇧🇬
georgi.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Sofia — frequent BDŽ traveler

"The hotel receptionist in Plovdiv Old Town spoke Western Bulgarian with different vowels from Sofia standard. Captio AI handled it without issue. Check-in details and breakfast times appeared on screen word by word."

Ivanka S. 🇧🇬
ivanka.s***@gmail.com
Deaf, Plovdiv — domestic traveler

"Bansko ski resort staff switch between Bulgarian and English rapidly. I had Captio AI running and both languages appeared on screen without a break. Lift pass instructions, piste information — I understood everything."

Nikola D. 🇧🇬
nikola.d***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Bansko — ski resort guest

"The guide at Rila Monastery spoke Bulgarian at full speed. Captio AI captioned the entire history — the founding, the murals, the centuries of Ottoman occupation. I came away knowing the monastery's story completely."

Maria T. 🇧🇬
maria.t***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Sofia — tourist

"BDŽ platform announcements at Sofia Central come in fast Bulgarian and the echo is terrible. Captio AI near the speaker showed the platform number and departure time on screen. I've stopped guessing which platform."

Georgi P. 🇧🇬
georgi.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Sofia — frequent BDŽ traveler

"The hotel receptionist in Plovdiv Old Town spoke Western Bulgarian with different vowels from Sofia standard. Captio AI handled it without issue. Check-in details and breakfast times appeared on screen word by word."

Ivanka S. 🇧🇬
ivanka.s***@gmail.com
Deaf, Plovdiv — domestic traveler

"Bansko ski resort staff switch between Bulgarian and English rapidly. I had Captio AI running and both languages appeared on screen without a break. Lift pass instructions, piste information — I understood everything."

Nikola D. 🇧🇬
nikola.d***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Bansko — ski resort guest

"The guide at Rila Monastery spoke Bulgarian at full speed. Captio AI captioned the entire history — the founding, the murals, the centuries of Ottoman occupation. I came away knowing the monastery's story completely."

Maria T. 🇧🇬
maria.t***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Sofia — tourist

Download for free

Download on theApp Store
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Bulgarian.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store