Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Croatian live captions and productivity tool for traveling

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

Download for free

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Captio AI app showing live captions

Download for free

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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 Zagreb Franjo Tuđman Airport (ZAG) or Split Airport (SPU) come in Croatian and English. Captio AI captions both languages so you catch gate numbers and boarding times without missing a departure.

🚂Train stations and public transport

HŽ Putnički Prijevoz trains and Krilo catamaran ferries announce stops and arrivals in Croatian. At Zagreb Glavni Kolodvor or Split ferry port, Captio AI captions the ticket exchange and PA in real time.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Zagreb's Gornji Grad or in Dubrovnik's Old Town explaining check-in details and local tips in Croatian. Place Captio AI on the desk and follow the full conversation.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking for directions near Diocletian's Palace in Split or navigating Dubrovnik's old city walls on foot. Fast Croatian from locals — Captio AI captions their reply so you find your way.

🛃Customs and immigration

Croatian border control and customs at Zagreb International or the Neum/Bosnia corridor land crossings speak quickly in formal Croatian. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Dubrovnik City Walls, Plitvice Lakes National Park, or the Diocletian's Palace in Split delivering Croatian commentary on Roman and medieval Adriatic history. Captio AI captions in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Croatian
90.5%

word accuracy

independent benchmark, 2025

< 200ms
you speak
captions

real-time captions

first word appears as you speak

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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.

Croatian

Why Croatian is hard to understand

Four pitch accents

  • Croatian's short/long × rising/falling tone system is carried by pitch — invisible on the lips
  • Croatian has four pitch accents: short rising, short falling, long rising, and long falling. These distinctions are carried by pitch contour and vowel duration — not by any change in lip or jaw position. At Zagreb Franjo Tuđman Airport or a hotel desk in Dubrovnik or Split, a Croatian agent uses pitch accent to distinguish word pairs that look identical on their face. A deaf traveler watching the speaker's lips receives no phonological information about which of the four accent types just appeared.

Three dialect groups

  • Shtokavian, Chakavian, and Kajkavian are distinct dialect groups across Croatia
  • Croatian has three major dialect branches: Shtokavian (the basis of standard Croatian), Chakavian (spoken along the Dalmatian coast and islands — Hvar, Brač, Korčula), and Kajkavian (spoken in Zagreb and northern Croatia). A deaf traveler calibrated to standard Croatian encounters Chakavian from hotel staff in Hvar or guides in Split — a dialect with different vocabulary, vowel system, and consonant inventory from standard — without visual warning.

Ijekavian vowel sequences

  • Standard Croatian Ijekavian creates 'ije/je' sequences that differ from other regional forms
  • Standard Croatian uses Ijekavian pronunciation: historical /ě/ becomes 'ije' before long syllables and 'je' before short syllables. These vowel sequences (ije-, je-) appear in common vocabulary and create longer vowel strings than other South Slavic reflex variants. A deaf traveler prepared from Ekavian Serbian (where /ě/ becomes /e/) encounters systematically different vowel sequences throughout Croatian — more visual vowel motion, but a different pattern.

Consonant clusters

  • Croatian allows complex consonant clusters that arrive as rapid visual sequences
  • Croatian permits complex consonant clusters at word beginnings and endings: 'tvrđava' (fortress), 'srce' (heart), 'vrh' (peak). At a split ferry terminal or a Dubrovnik taxi stand, these clusters arrive as rapid sequences that blur into indistinct motion for a deaf traveler reading lips, with multiple consonants occupying space in the visual stream where a single position marker would be more interpretable.

Croatian-English code-switching in Adriatic tourism

  • Dubrovnik, Split, and Hvar hotel staff switch between Croatian and English constantly
  • Croatia's massive Adriatic tourism economy — Dubrovnik, Split, Hvar, Zadar, Šibenik — means that hotel staff, boat crew, and tour guides switch between Croatian and English continuously, often within single sentences. A deaf traveler reading Croatian lips at a Dubrovnik hotel or an island boat tour encounters English phonology arriving without transition, requiring an immediate phoneme set change.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Croatia

Croatia has documented hearing impairment data from its national disability census. In 2011, 13,230 persons in Croatia were recorded with impaired hearing, and 2,763 of them had total or major disability. The Croatian Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, established in 1921, today has approximately 9,000 members organized across 23 regional associations — indicating a substantial community with longstanding organized advocacy. A 2024 validation study of the Croatian Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly identified a significant population of older Croatian adults with unaddressed hearing loss — suggesting that the formal disability count substantially undercounts the true population navigating daily life with hearing difficulty.

Croatia's travel infrastructure — including Zagreb Franjo Tuđman Airport (handling over 3.5 million passengers annually), Split Airport (handling over 4 million, with strong summer peaks), HŽ Infra's rail network, and the Jadrolinija ferry network connecting 50 coastal and island destinations — communicates critical travel information through spoken Croatian PA announcements without real-time captioning. Croatia's Adriatic tourism economy — Dubrovnik, Split, Hvar, Plitvice Lakes — draws over 20 million tourist arrivals per year; all guided tours of these sites are conducted verbally without captioning infrastructure.

Captio AI captions Croatian in real time — whether a ferry departure announcement at Split port, an immigration officer at Zagreb International, or a guide at Plitvice Lakes National Park — so a deaf traveler in Croatia follows every instruction and question without depending on audio infrastructure built without them in mind.

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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

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Reviews

People love Captio AI

"HŽ platform announcements at Zagreb Glavni Kolodvor come in fast Croatian over a bad PA echo. Captio AI near the speaker showed the platform and departure time on screen. I stopped asking fellow passengers which platform."

Ivan K. 🇭🇷
ivan.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Zagreb — frequent HŽ rail traveler

"Hvar ferry crew speak Dalmatian Chakavian — very different from Zagreb standard Croatian. Captio AI captioned the departure announcement and the crew's safety briefing accurately. Right boat, right time, right dock."

Maja P. 🇭🇷
maja.p***@gmail.com
Deaf, Split — Dalmatian island traveler

"Dubrovnik hotel staff switch between Croatian and English every few sentences for different guests. Captio AI captioned both without any gap. Check-in details, wall tour timing, beach directions — all clear on screen."

Tomislav B. 🇭🇷
tomislav.b***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Dubrovnik — tourist

"The guide at Plitvice Lakes National Park spoke fast Croatian at normal speed. Captio AI captioned the whole narration — the travertine barriers, the lake formation, the wildlife. I followed every sentence for the first time."

Ana V. 🇭🇷
ana.v***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Zagreb — Plitvice Lakes visitor

"HŽ platform announcements at Zagreb Glavni Kolodvor come in fast Croatian over a bad PA echo. Captio AI near the speaker showed the platform and departure time on screen. I stopped asking fellow passengers which platform."

Ivan K. 🇭🇷
ivan.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Zagreb — frequent HŽ rail traveler

"Hvar ferry crew speak Dalmatian Chakavian — very different from Zagreb standard Croatian. Captio AI captioned the departure announcement and the crew's safety briefing accurately. Right boat, right time, right dock."

Maja P. 🇭🇷
maja.p***@gmail.com
Deaf, Split — Dalmatian island traveler

"Dubrovnik hotel staff switch between Croatian and English every few sentences for different guests. Captio AI captioned both without any gap. Check-in details, wall tour timing, beach directions — all clear on screen."

Tomislav B. 🇭🇷
tomislav.b***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Dubrovnik — tourist

"The guide at Plitvice Lakes National Park spoke fast Croatian at normal speed. Captio AI captioned the whole narration — the travertine barriers, the lake formation, the wildlife. I followed every sentence for the first time."

Ana V. 🇭🇷
ana.v***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Zagreb — Plitvice Lakes visitor

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Croatian.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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