Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Latvian 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

At Riga International Airport (RIX), the largest hub in the Baltics, gate changes and boarding calls come in Latvian and English. Captio AI captions both languages so you catch every gate number and boarding time.

🚂Train stations and public transport

Latvian Railways (Pasažieru vilciens) and Riga's trams and trolleybuses announce stops in Latvian. Captio AI captions the ticket-counter exchange and the platform PA in real time so you board the right service.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A receptionist in Riga's Old Town or a guesthouse in Jūrmala explaining check-in, breakfast, and the way to the beach in Latvian. Place Captio AI on the desk and follow every word.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking the way through Riga's medieval centre or along the Gauja valley. Fast Latvian from a local — Captio AI captions the reply so you find the route the first time.

🛃Customs and immigration

Border and customs officers at Riga Airport speak quickly in formal Latvian. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately and confidently.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at the Old Town of Riga, Rundāle Palace, or the Gauja National Park delivering Latvian commentary. Captio AI captions so you follow the full history.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Latvian
89.9%

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.

Latvian

Why Latvian is hard to understand

Syllable tones

  • Three tones — including a 'broken' tone — you cannot see
  • Standard Latvian distinguishes long syllables by tone: level, falling, and a 'broken' tone marked by a sudden glottal catch in pitch and intensity. These contrasts can separate two words with the same sounds, and they live entirely in pitch — nothing in the lips or jaw signals which tone just occurred. At a Riga counter, a deaf traveler sees one mouth shape for words the tone keeps apart.

Palatalization

  • Soft consonants that barely show on the lips
  • Latvian marks palatalization on several consonants — the difference between a 'hard' and a 'soft' sound — and this contrast carries meaning. The tongue-body raising that softens a consonant is nearly invisible from the front, so a station clerk's soft and hard consonants look the same to a lip-reader while meaning different things.

Latgalian variety

  • The east of the country sounds different
  • Latgalian, spoken in the southeast around Latgale, has its own tonal system and a stronger soft–hard consonant opposition shaped by contact with Lithuanian and Russian. A deaf traveler calibrated to Riga's Latvian meets, in Daugavpils or the Latgale countryside, a variety with different vowels and tones on the lips.

Fixed stress hides the ending

  • Stress on the first syllable, meaning on the last
  • Latvian stresses the first syllable of almost every word, but its grammar — case, number, tense — is carried by endings at the far end of the word. Those unstressed final syllables are exactly where fast speech weakens the vowels, so the part that tells you where you are going is the part that fades first.

Fast connected speech

  • Casual Latvian links and clips
  • In relaxed speech Latvian runs words together and shortens unstressed vowels. At a busy Riga Central Market stall or on a crowded trolleybus, the careful pronunciation that would help a lip-reader dissolves into a continuous stream.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Latvia

The Latvian Association of the Deaf estimates that about 32,000 people across the country are at risk of social exclusion because of deafness or severely impaired hearing — a substantial group in a nation of fewer than two million, and one whose difficulties, in the association's words, limit their chances to participate fully in society and to take up training and work. That figure sits within a European pattern in which roughly one in five people has some degree of hearing loss, and it counts only the more severe end of the spectrum.

Dedicated support has historically been thin: it was only relatively recently, with EU regional funding, that purpose-built rehabilitation and support centres for deaf and severely hearing-impaired people opened in Riga and Liepāja, filling a gap where a comprehensive service simply had not existed. Latvia's travel infrastructure reflects the same lag. Riga International — the busiest airport in the Baltic states — along with Latvian Railways and Riga's tram and trolleybus network, communicates through spoken Latvian announcements, with no standardised real-time captioning at gates, platforms, or counters.

Captio AI captions Latvian in real time — a boarding call at Riga Airport, a platform announcement on Pasažieru vilciens, a guesthouse check-in in Jūrmala — so a deaf traveler in Latvia follows every change and question without depending on 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

"Riga Airport boarding calls are fast Latvian and English, and the broken tone means words I think I catch turn into something else. Captio AI captioned the gate change on my screen. I read it and went straight to the gate instead of second-guessing the board."

Jānis B. 🇱🇻
janis.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Riga — frequent traveler

"In Latgale the speech has its own tones and softer consonants than Riga Latvian, and I could never lip-read the guesthouse hosts here. Captio AI captioned check-in in the local variety without any trouble — the room, the breakfast, the bus times."

Līga K. 🇱🇻
liga.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, Daugavpils — Latgale traveler

"The train to Jūrmala changes platforms sometimes and it is only announced over the speaker in Latvian. I missed it once. Now Captio AI captions the announcement the instant it plays and I catch the platform every time."

Kārlis Z. 🇱🇻
karlis.z***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Riga — Pasažieru vilciens commuter

"The Rundāle Palace guide spoke quick Latvian about the baroque rooms and the rose garden. I would have caught a fraction. With Captio AI I read the whole tour — the ballroom, the duke, the restoration — every detail on my screen."

Ilze M. 🇱🇻
ilze.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bauska — heritage tourist

"Riga Airport boarding calls are fast Latvian and English, and the broken tone means words I think I catch turn into something else. Captio AI captioned the gate change on my screen. I read it and went straight to the gate instead of second-guessing the board."

Jānis B. 🇱🇻
janis.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Riga — frequent traveler

"In Latgale the speech has its own tones and softer consonants than Riga Latvian, and I could never lip-read the guesthouse hosts here. Captio AI captioned check-in in the local variety without any trouble — the room, the breakfast, the bus times."

Līga K. 🇱🇻
liga.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, Daugavpils — Latgale traveler

"The train to Jūrmala changes platforms sometimes and it is only announced over the speaker in Latvian. I missed it once. Now Captio AI captions the announcement the instant it plays and I catch the platform every time."

Kārlis Z. 🇱🇻
karlis.z***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Riga — Pasažieru vilciens commuter

"The Rundāle Palace guide spoke quick Latvian about the baroque rooms and the rose garden. I would have caught a fraction. With Captio AI I read the whole tour — the ballroom, the duke, the restoration — every detail on my screen."

Ilze M. 🇱🇻
ilze.m***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bauska — heritage tourist

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Latvian.

Captio AI is free to start

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