Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Telugu 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 Rajiv Gandhi International in Hyderabad or Visakhapatnam Airport, announcements come in Telugu, Hindi, and English. Captio AI captions all languages so you never miss a gate change or boarding call.

🚂Train stations and public transport

South Central Railway announces platforms in Telugu at speed. Captio AI captions ticket counter conversations and platform PA in real time — however quickly the announcer speaks.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Hyderabad or Vijayawada explaining check-in details and local tips in Telugu. Captio AI captions every word on the reception desk.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking for directions in Hyderabad's Charminar quarter or through Vizag's neighborhoods. Telugu spoken fast with local colouring — Captio AI captions in real time.

🛃Customs and immigration

Immigration officers at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International speak in Telugu and English. Captio AI captions each question so you respond accurately and confidently.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Golconda Fort, Charminar, or Tirupati delivering Telugu commentary. Captio AI captions so you follow the full story behind every site.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Telugu
91.8%

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.

Telugu

Why Telugu is hard to understand

Aspirated consonants

  • Voiceless-aspirated pairs identical on the lips
  • Telugu distinguishes aspirated from unaspirated stops: /p/-/pʰ/, /t/-/tʰ/, /k/-/kʰ/ and their voiced equivalents. At a Hyderabad hotel desk or a railway ticket window, the aspiration that separates common Telugu words is an entirely acoustic event — it produces no visible lip difference that a deaf traveler can use to distinguish words.

Retroflex consonants

  • Tongue-back sounds invisible at the lips
  • Telugu has an extensive retroflex series — /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ɳ/, /ɭ/ — produced with the tongue curled back toward the palate. These are entirely invisible at the lip level. At a Tirupati ticket counter or a Visakhapatnam customs desk, the retroflex consonants that carry phonemic distinctions in Telugu leave no visible trace on the speaker's face.

Phonemic vowel length

  • Short and long vowels sound different — look the same
  • Telugu distinguishes phonemically short and long vowels in three pairs: /a/-/aː/, /i/-/iː/, /u/-/uː/. These produce no visible difference at the lips — only duration distinguishes them. At a hotel reception or airline counter, the length distinction that differentiates words is simply unreadable from a speaker's face.

Regional dialect variation

  • Coastal, Rayalaseema, and Telangana Telugu all differ
  • Coastal Andhra Telugu (around Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam), Rayalaseema Telugu (Kurnool, Kadapa), and Telangana Telugu (Hyderabad) differ substantially in vocabulary, vowel quality, and prosody. A deaf traveler lip-reading airport staff in Hyderabad may find the same words look quite different from hotel staff in Visakhapatnam or a station clerk in Tirupati.

Telugu-English code-switching

  • Hyderabadi Telugu mixes English constantly
  • In Hyderabad and across urban Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, English and Telugu blend freely. At airport desks, hotels, and tour operators, the language of a sentence shifts without visual warning. A deaf traveler must lip-read across two phonological systems — often mid-sentence — without any cue that the switch has occurred.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana

India's hearing loss burden is substantial across all states, with WHO estimates placing around 63 million people nationally with a significant auditory impairment. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, census data has consistently found hearing disability among the most commonly reported disability categories. Nationwide, the audiometrist-to-population ratio is approximately 1 per 500,000 — meaning that across India's Telugu-speaking states, with a combined population of around 90 million, access to audiological diagnosis and hearing rehabilitation is severely constrained, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas.

Travel infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, South Central Railway's extensive network serving Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, and dozens of smaller cities — communicates critical passenger information through spoken Telugu and Hindi PA announcements. No standardised real-time captioning exists at these travel hubs. For a deaf traveler navigating Secunderabad Railway Station or a crowded domestic terminal at Rajiv Gandhi International, a missed announcement means a missed platform or a missed flight.

Captio AI captions Telugu speech in real time — whether a platform announcement at Vijayawada Junction, a hotel receptionist in Hyderabad, or a guide at Golconda Fort — so a deaf traveler in Andhra Pradesh or Telangana follows every instruction and exchange 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

"Rajiv Gandhi International PA announcements come in Telugu, Hindi, and English. I used to watch the departure board and hope I had not missed a gate change. Captio AI captions all three languages and I read every update on screen."

Ravi K. 🇮🇳
ravi.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hyderabad — frequent traveler

"South Central Railway platforms are announced in Telugu and Hindi at speed. I missed a platform at Vijayawada Junction once because I could not catch the number. With Captio AI I read the announcement immediately — I board the right train every time."

Lakshmi P. 🇮🇳
lakshmi.p***@gmail.com
Deaf, Vijayawada — domestic traveler

"The guide at Tirupati spoke formal Telugu very quickly. I followed maybe a quarter of the commentary without Captio AI. With it I followed the full story — the history, the significance of each shrine, every detail of the prasadam queue."

Suresh B. 🇮🇳
suresh.b***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Tirupati — pilgrim traveler

"Hotel receptionists in Vizag speak Coastal Telugu at natural pace. Captio AI captioned every word of the check-in — floor, room number, key card, breakfast timing. The first complete hotel check-in I have had without asking for repeats."

Anitha R. 🇮🇳
anitha.r***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Visakhapatnam — tourist

"Rajiv Gandhi International PA announcements come in Telugu, Hindi, and English. I used to watch the departure board and hope I had not missed a gate change. Captio AI captions all three languages and I read every update on screen."

Ravi K. 🇮🇳
ravi.k***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hyderabad — frequent traveler

"South Central Railway platforms are announced in Telugu and Hindi at speed. I missed a platform at Vijayawada Junction once because I could not catch the number. With Captio AI I read the announcement immediately — I board the right train every time."

Lakshmi P. 🇮🇳
lakshmi.p***@gmail.com
Deaf, Vijayawada — domestic traveler

"The guide at Tirupati spoke formal Telugu very quickly. I followed maybe a quarter of the commentary without Captio AI. With it I followed the full story — the history, the significance of each shrine, every detail of the prasadam queue."

Suresh B. 🇮🇳
suresh.b***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Tirupati — pilgrim traveler

"Hotel receptionists in Vizag speak Coastal Telugu at natural pace. Captio AI captioned every word of the check-in — floor, room number, key card, breakfast timing. The first complete hotel check-in I have had without asking for repeats."

Anitha R. 🇮🇳
anitha.r***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Visakhapatnam — tourist

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Telugu.

Captio AI is free to start

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