Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Czech live captions and productivity tool for traveling

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

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Captio AI app showing live captions

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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 Prague Václav Havel Airport (PRG) or Brno-Tuřany Airport come in Czech and English. Captio AI captions both languages so you catch gate numbers and boarding times without missing a departure.

🚂Train stations and public transport

České Dráhy (ČD) trains announce stops in Czech. At Praha Hlavní Nádraží, Brno Hlavní Nádraží, or Plzeň Hlavní Nádraží, Captio AI captions the ticket window exchange and platform PA in real time.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Prague's Old Town or in Český Krumlov explaining check-in details and local tips in Czech. 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 Prague's Wenceslas Square or navigating the Prague Metro on foot. Fast Czech from locals and tram drivers — Captio AI captions their reply so you find your way.

🛃Customs and immigration

Czech border control and customs at Prague Václav Havel Airport speak quickly in formal Czech and English. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately and confidently.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Prague Castle, the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora, or Český Krumlov Castle delivering Czech commentary on Bohemian history. Captio AI captions in real time so you follow every detail.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Czech
90.3%

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.

Czech

Why Czech is hard to understand

The unique ř phoneme

  • Czech's ř — a sound unique to Czech — is produced at the alveolar ridge, invisible on the lips
  • Czech has /r̝/ (written ⟨ř⟩), a raised alveolar non-sonorant trill that exists in no other language in regular use. This sound is produced at the alveolar ridge with a complex articulation that has no visible lip or jaw component. At Prague Václav Havel Airport or Brno Hlavní Nádraží, a station announcer or hotel receptionist uses ř in standard vocabulary. A deaf traveler watching the speaker's face sees nothing that corresponds to the most phonetically distinctive sound in the Czech language.

Voicing assimilation

  • Whether a Czech consonant is voiced or voiceless depends on what follows — not on the lips
  • Czech has extensive regressive voicing assimilation across word boundaries: a consonant becomes voiced if followed by a voiced consonant and voiceless if followed by a voiceless one. This means the pronunciation of a word changes depending on the word that follows — dynamic contextual variation that a deaf traveler cannot anticipate from watching lips, since voiced/voiceless pairs like p/b, t/d, k/g, f/v are visually identical.

Vowel quantity

  • Czech long and short vowels differ only in duration — invisible on the lips
  • Czech has five vowel pairs distinguished by length (a/á, e/é, i/í, o/ó, u/ú), where length alone creates distinct words. At a Praha Hlavní Nádraží ticket window or a hotel desk in Karlovy Vary, the difference between short and long vowels is a duration difference — not a change in lip shape or jaw position. A deaf traveler watching the speaker's lips cannot access the length distinction that changes word meaning.

Bohemian vs Moravian accents

  • Prague Czech and Brno Czech differ in vowel quality and prosody at every hotel counter
  • Bohemian Czech (Prague, Plzeň, Liberec) and Moravian Czech (Brno, Olomouc, Ostrava) differ in vowel quality, rhythm, and certain consonant realizations. Eastern Moravian dialects differ even more substantially from Standard Czech. A deaf traveler calibrated to Prague Czech arrives in Brno to find different vowel patterns at hotel desks and train ticket windows — without visual warning.

Czech-Slovak intelligibility and switching

  • Czech speakers freely mix Slovak words — arriving without visual announcement
  • Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible and after decades of Czechoslovakia, Czech speakers freely incorporate Slovak words, especially in regions near the Slovak border and among speakers who grew up in the former joint state. A deaf traveler calibrated to Czech encounters Slovak-influenced speech at a Brno hotel or an Ostrava train station — a slightly different phonological system arriving mid-conversation without visual signal.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Czech Republic

The WHO estimates that approximately 20% of the European region's population — around 190 million people across Europe — live with some degree of hearing loss. For the Czech Republic, with a population of approximately 10.9 million, this corresponds to roughly 2 million people navigating daily life with hearing difficulty. Genetic research in the Czech Republic has documented a significant burden of hereditary hearing loss: a study from Moravia-Silesia found that 22% of patients with nonsyndromic sensorineural hearing loss carried biallelic GJB2 mutations — one of the most common genetic causes of profound deafness — indicating that congenital deafness is well-represented within the Czech population.

The Czech Republic's travel infrastructure — including Prague Václav Havel Airport (handling over 17 million passengers per year), the České Dráhy (ČD) and RegioJet rail networks connecting Prague, Brno, Plzeň, and Ostrava, and the Prague Metro's three lines serving the capital — communicates critical travel information through spoken Czech PA announcements. Real-time captioning is not a standard accessibility feature at Czech airports or rail stations. Prague's major tourist sites — Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, Old Town Square, the Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora, and Český Krumlov — attract over 20 million visitors per year; guided tours are conducted verbally in Czech and English without captioning.

Captio AI captions Czech in real time — whether a platform announcement at Praha Hlavní Nádraží, an immigration officer at Václav Havel Airport, or a guide at Prague Castle — so a deaf traveler in the Czech Republic follows every instruction and announcement 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

"Platform changes at Praha Hlavní Nádraží come in fast Czech over a bad PA. I pointed Captio AI at the speaker and the new platform number appeared on screen. I've stopped running to the departure board and back."

Tomáš N. 🇨🇿
tomas.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Prague — frequent ČD rail traveler

"Moravian Czech at the Brno hotel desk is different from Prague Czech. The vowels are different and the pace is faster. Captio AI handled both without switching anything. Check-in details appeared on screen word by word."

Jana H. 🇨🇿
jana.h***@gmail.com
Deaf, Brno — domestic traveler

"Immigration at Václav Havel Airport speaks fast formal Czech with the occasional English question. I had Captio AI open and every question appeared on screen accurately. I answered correctly the first time."

Marek V. 🇨🇿
marek.v***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Prague — business traveler at PRG

"The guide at the Sedlec Ossuary spoke Czech at full conversational speed. Captio AI captioned the entire history of the bone church — the 40,000 skulls, the Black Death, the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms. I followed every sentence."

Eva K. 🇨🇿
eva.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Kutná Hora — tourist

"Platform changes at Praha Hlavní Nádraží come in fast Czech over a bad PA. I pointed Captio AI at the speaker and the new platform number appeared on screen. I've stopped running to the departure board and back."

Tomáš N. 🇨🇿
tomas.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Prague — frequent ČD rail traveler

"Moravian Czech at the Brno hotel desk is different from Prague Czech. The vowels are different and the pace is faster. Captio AI handled both without switching anything. Check-in details appeared on screen word by word."

Jana H. 🇨🇿
jana.h***@gmail.com
Deaf, Brno — domestic traveler

"Immigration at Václav Havel Airport speaks fast formal Czech with the occasional English question. I had Captio AI open and every question appeared on screen accurately. I answered correctly the first time."

Marek V. 🇨🇿
marek.v***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Prague — business traveler at PRG

"The guide at the Sedlec Ossuary spoke Czech at full conversational speed. Captio AI captioned the entire history of the bone church — the 40,000 skulls, the Black Death, the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms. I followed every sentence."

Eva K. 🇨🇿
eva.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Kutná Hora — tourist

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Czech.

Captio AI is free to start

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