Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Slovak 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 Bratislava M. R. Štefánik Airport (BTS) or Košice International Airport (KSC) come in Slovak and English. Captio AI captions both so you catch gate numbers and boarding times.

🚂Train stations and public transport

ZSSK (Železničná spoločnosť Slovensko) trains announce stops in Slovak. At Bratislava Hlavná Stanica or Košice main station, Captio AI captions the ticket window exchange and platform PA in real time.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Bratislava's Old Town or in Poprad near the High Tatras explaining check-in details in Slovak. Place Captio AI on the desk and follow the full conversation without asking for repeats.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking for directions near Bratislava Castle or navigating Košice's pedestrian zone. Fast Slovak from locals — Captio AI captions their reply so you find your way without confusion.

🛃Customs and immigration

Slovak border control and customs at Bratislava Airport or land crossings with Austria and Hungary speak quickly in formal Slovak. Captio AI captions every question.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Spiš Castle, Bratislava Castle, or a High Tatras mountain guide delivering Slovak commentary on medieval and Carpathian landscape history. Captio AI captions in real time.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Slovak
91.5%

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.

Slovak

Why Slovak is hard to understand

Rhythmical law and vowel length

  • Slovak's vowel length system has complex rules — and length is invisible on the lips
  • Slovak has a phonemic short/long vowel distinction AND a 'rhythmical law' that prohibits two consecutive long syllables within a native word. The resulting vowel length pattern is complex and context-dependent. At Bratislava M. R. Štefánik Airport or a hotel desk in the High Tatras, these length distinctions carry lexical and morphological meaning — but they are purely duration differences, with no change in lip shape or jaw position. A deaf traveler watching a Slovak agent's face cannot access the length system that governs much of Slovak word formation.

Eastern Slovak lacks vowel length

  • Eastern Slovak dialects drop the short-long distinction entirely — different phonology at Košice airport
  • Eastern Slovak dialects — the variety spoken in Prešov, Košice, and the Eastern Slovak Lowlands — lack the short/long vowel opposition entirely that characterizes standard Bratislava Slovak. A deaf traveler calibrated to standard Slovak arrives at Košice International Airport or a hotel in Prešov to find that the vowel length system they prepared for is absent — replaced by a different prosodic pattern from every check-in agent and counter staff.

Affricate distinctions

  • Slovak's four affricate phonemes produce similar lip shapes across the series
  • Slovak has four affricate phonemes: /ts/ (c), /dz/, /tʃ/ (č), and /dʒ/ (dž) — two alveolar and two post-alveolar. All four produce a lip-rounding and forward jaw position that is similar on the face. The distinction between alveolar and post-alveolar affricates is made at the tongue blade — invisible to a deaf traveler watching the speaker's lips. At a Bratislava hotel or a train counter at Košice, these distinctions carry lexical meaning throughout Slovak vocabulary.

Slovak-Czech intelligibility and switching

  • Slovak and Czech speakers freely mix words — switching arrives mid-sentence
  • Slovak and Czech are mutually intelligible and after 74 years of Czechoslovakia, Slovak speakers readily incorporate Czech words and phrases. In Bratislava — on the Austrian border — Czech tourists and Czech-influenced Slovak speech are both common. A hotel receptionist at a Bratislava Old Town hotel may use Czech words mid-sentence without switching language consciously. A deaf traveler calibrated to Slovak encounters Czech phonology arriving without transition.

High Tatras dialect variation

  • Mountain community dialects in the Tatras have different vowel systems from standard Slovak
  • The High Tatras — Slovakia's main mountain tourist region — has local dialects with older vowel and consonant features distinct from standard Bratislava Slovak. A deaf traveler calibrated to standard Slovak arrives in Štrbské Pleso or Poprad to find different vowel realizations from hotel desk staff and ski lift operators — without visual warning.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Slovakia

Slovakia's deaf and hard of hearing community includes a significant burden of hereditary hearing loss. A study covering the Central European Roma population — which makes up 7–9% of Slovakia's population — found MARVELD2 gene mutations causing hereditary deafness at elevated frequency, indicating that certain Slovak communities face a disproportionately high rate of congenital deafness. Applying WHO European regional estimates to Slovakia's population of approximately 5.5 million — where 20% of the European population have some hearing loss — suggests over 1 million Slovaks navigating daily life with hearing difficulty. Slovakia's hearing aid adoption rates and audiological infrastructure remain below Western European averages.

Slovakia's travel infrastructure — including Bratislava M. R. Štefánik Airport, Košice International Airport, and ZSSK's intercity rail network connecting Bratislava, Žilina, Poprad, and Košice — communicates critical travel information through spoken Slovak PA announcements without real-time captioning. Slovakia's tourist circuit — the High Tatras ski and hiking resorts, Spiš Castle (Europe's largest castle ruins by area, a UNESCO World Heritage site), Slovenský Raj National Park, and Bratislava's Old Town — is visited through verbally guided tours in Slovak without captioning infrastructure.

Captio AI captions Slovak in real time — whether a ZSSK platform announcement at Bratislava Hlavná Stanica, a customs officer at Bratislava Airport, or a guide at Spiš Castle — so a deaf traveler in Slovakia 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

"ZSSK platform changes at Bratislava Hlavná Stanica come in fast Slovak over a poor PA. Captio AI held near the speaker showed the new platform on screen. I've stopped running between tracks to check the board."

Marek H. 🇸🇰
marek.h***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bratislava — frequent ZSSK rail traveler

"Eastern Slovak at Košice airport is very different from Bratislava standard — no vowel length, different prosody. Captio AI captioned the check-in agent's Košice Slovak accurately. Gate number and boarding time — right first time."

Zuzana K. 🇸🇰
zuzana.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, Košice — domestic traveler from east Slovakia

"The hotel receptionist in Poprad spoke Tatras-region Slovak with mountain dialect features. Captio AI handled it. Check-in details and ski hire instructions appeared on screen without any gaps."

Tomáš R. 🇸🇰
tomas.r***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Poprad — High Tatras visitor

"The guide at Spiš Castle spoke fast Slovak mixed with Czech phrases for the Czech visitors. Captio AI captioned both. I followed the full 1,000-year history of the castle — the Mongol siege, the Habsburg ownership, the UNESCO listing."

Eva B. 🇸🇰
eva.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bratislava — tourist at Spiš Castle

"ZSSK platform changes at Bratislava Hlavná Stanica come in fast Slovak over a poor PA. Captio AI held near the speaker showed the new platform on screen. I've stopped running between tracks to check the board."

Marek H. 🇸🇰
marek.h***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bratislava — frequent ZSSK rail traveler

"Eastern Slovak at Košice airport is very different from Bratislava standard — no vowel length, different prosody. Captio AI captioned the check-in agent's Košice Slovak accurately. Gate number and boarding time — right first time."

Zuzana K. 🇸🇰
zuzana.k***@gmail.com
Deaf, Košice — domestic traveler from east Slovakia

"The hotel receptionist in Poprad spoke Tatras-region Slovak with mountain dialect features. Captio AI handled it. Check-in details and ski hire instructions appeared on screen without any gaps."

Tomáš R. 🇸🇰
tomas.r***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Poprad — High Tatras visitor

"The guide at Spiš Castle spoke fast Slovak mixed with Czech phrases for the Czech visitors. Captio AI captioned both. I followed the full 1,000-year history of the castle — the Mongol siege, the Habsburg ownership, the UNESCO listing."

Eva B. 🇸🇰
eva.b***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bratislava — tourist at Spiš Castle

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Slovak.

Captio AI is free to start

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