Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Persian 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 announcements at Imam Khomeini International in Tehran or Mehrabad arrive in fast formal Persian. Captio AI captions every boarding call and gate change so you never miss a departure — pointed at the PA speaker or a ground agent.

🚂Train stations and public transport

Iran's railway system (Raja Rail) announces departures and arrivals in Persian. At Tehran Rah Ahan station or Isfahan's rail terminal, Captio AI captions the ticket window exchange and platform announcement in real time.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Isfahan or Shiraz explaining room details and breakfast times in Persian. Place Captio AI on the counter and follow every word — no asking for repeats, no handwriting back and forth.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking for directions in Tehran's Grand Bazaar or navigating Shiraz's Vakil Bazaar on foot. Fast conversational Persian from shopkeepers and passers-by — Captio AI captions what they say so you find your way.

🛃Customs and immigration

Persian-speaking immigration officers at Imam Khomeini International or land border crossings speak quickly and formally. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately without confusion.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Persepolis near Shiraz, the Naghsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, or the Golestan Palace in Tehran delivering Persian commentary on 2,500 years of history. Captio AI captions in real time so you follow every detail.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Persian
89.1%

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.

Persian

Why Persian is hard to understand

Pharyngeal and uvular consonants

  • The deepest consonants in Persian are produced in the throat — invisible on the lips
  • Persian uses pharyngeal and uvular consonants — خ (voiceless velar fricative), غ (voiced velar fricative), ق (uvular stop), ح (pharyngeal fricative), and ع (voiced pharyngeal approximant) — produced deep in the throat with no corresponding lip or jaw movement. At passport control at Imam Khomeini International in Tehran, a customs officer or immigration agent uses these consonants in standard vocabulary. A deaf traveler watching the officer's face sees nothing that maps to these phonemes.

Colloquial vowel shift

  • Formal Persian and spoken Persian are almost different languages at the airport
  • Iranian colloquial Persian shifts the long /ā/ vowel of formal speech to /ō/ and changes the common suffix /an/ to /un/. A deaf traveler who studied formal Persian meets Tehran Airport staff and taxi drivers speaking a systematically shifted variety where core vocabulary sounds — and looks on the lips — like something entirely different from what they prepared.

Vowel length contrast

  • Short and long vowels carry meaning but are invisible in fast speech
  • Persian has three short vowels (a, e, o) and three corresponding long vowels (ā, i, u) where length alone distinguishes words. In natural fast speech at an Isfahan bazaar hotel desk or a Shiraz airport counter, the length distinction in vowels — the only difference between some word pairs — compresses and disappears. A deaf traveler cannot recover this distinction from watching the speaker's lips.

Dari vs Iranian Persian

  • Afghan Dari and Iranian Persian share a script but differ at the airport
  • Dari (Afghan Persian) and Iranian Persian share the same writing system but differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, and prosody. A deaf traveler who prepared for Iranian Persian arrives at Hamid Karzai International in Kabul to find Dari — a different phonological system — from every airline and immigration staff member. The visual similarity of the two varieties gives no warning that the spoken forms have diverged.

Fast elision in connected speech

  • Syllables disappear in natural Persian conversation
  • Persian colloquial speech aggressively drops unstressed syllables in fast connected conversation. At a guided tour of Persepolis near Shiraz, a tour guide's natural-speed Persian reduces words to forms that diverge substantially from the slower citation forms a deaf traveler practiced. The gap between prepared knowledge and actual spoken input is especially wide in tourist guide speech.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Iran

Hearing loss is the most prevalent form of disability in Iran, accounting for 68.3% of all registered disability cases. A cross-sectional population study in Tehran found a total prevalence of hearing impairment and deafness of 14.27% across all age groups — with 27.45% of those cases classified as moderate and 4.58% as severe. Neonatal hearing loss in Iran occurs at a rate of approximately 2.6 per 1,000 live births, with substantial regional variation (0.9 to 5.8 per 1,000 across provinces), according to a situation analysis published in the Iranian Journal of Otolaryngology and the WHO EMRO regional framework.

Iran's ear and hearing care programme has expanded national newborn screening coverage substantially since 2014, but significant gaps remain in adult hearing rehabilitation, hearing aid provision, and communication support in public infrastructure. Iran's air and rail travel infrastructure — including Imam Khomeini International Airport, Mehrabad Airport, and the Raja Rail intercity network — communicates critical information primarily through verbal PA announcements and spoken counter interactions. Iranian Sign Language (ZIM — Zaban-e Ishareh-ye Iran) is used by some deaf Iranians, but the trained interpreter provision at airports and border crossings is limited, and real-time captioning of travel infrastructure does not exist at a system level.

Captio AI captions Persian in real time — whether an immigration officer at Imam Khomeini International, a guide at Persepolis, or a hotel receptionist in Isfahan — so a deaf traveler in Iran follows every instruction, question, 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

"Immigration at Imam Khomeini airport speaks fast formal Persian and the booths are glass-enclosed. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and every question appeared on screen. I answered without asking for anything to be written down."

Arman K. 🇮🇷
arman.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Tehran — business traveler

"Train tickets at Isfahan railway station involve a counter conversation I always struggle with. Captio AI captions the agent's Persian in real time — departure time, seat class, platform. I got the right ticket without help."

Nasrin F. 🇮🇷
nasrin.f***@gmail.com
Deaf, Isfahan — domestic traveler

"The guide at Persepolis spoke naturally at full speed. I normally follow about a third of a tour guide. With Captio AI I followed every word — the timeline, the columns, the fire temples. The whole visit made sense."

Darius M. 🇮🇷
darius.m***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Shiraz — tourist

"Dari at Hamid Karzai airport is different from Iranian Persian and tools trained only on Iranian fail me. Captio AI handled the Dari-speaking check-in agent accurately. I reached my gate without confusion."

Layla H. 🇦🇫
layla.h***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Kabul — Afghan traveler

"Immigration at Imam Khomeini airport speaks fast formal Persian and the booths are glass-enclosed. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and every question appeared on screen. I answered without asking for anything to be written down."

Arman K. 🇮🇷
arman.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Tehran — business traveler

"Train tickets at Isfahan railway station involve a counter conversation I always struggle with. Captio AI captions the agent's Persian in real time — departure time, seat class, platform. I got the right ticket without help."

Nasrin F. 🇮🇷
nasrin.f***@gmail.com
Deaf, Isfahan — domestic traveler

"The guide at Persepolis spoke naturally at full speed. I normally follow about a third of a tour guide. With Captio AI I followed every word — the timeline, the columns, the fire temples. The whole visit made sense."

Darius M. 🇮🇷
darius.m***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Shiraz — tourist

"Dari at Hamid Karzai airport is different from Iranian Persian and tools trained only on Iranian fail me. Captio AI handled the Dari-speaking check-in agent accurately. I reached my gate without confusion."

Layla H. 🇦🇫
layla.h***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Kabul — Afghan traveler

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Persian.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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