Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Vietnamese live captions and productivity tool for traveling

For deaf and hard of hearing people.

Download for free

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Captio AI app showing live captions

Download for free

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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 Noi Bai International in Hanoi or Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City, announcements come in Vietnamese at speed. Captio AI captions every gate change and boarding call so you never miss a departure update.

🚂Train stations and public transport

Vietnam Railways' Reunification Express announces stations in Vietnamese. Captio AI captions ticket counter conversations and onboard PA in real time on the Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh City route.

🏨Hotels and check-in

A hotel receptionist in Hanoi or Hoi An explaining check-in details and local recommendations in Vietnamese. Captio AI captions the full exchange on the reception desk.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking for directions in Hanoi's Old Quarter or finding your way through HCMC's backstreets. Vietnamese spoken fast with Northern or Southern colouring — Captio AI captions in real time.

🛃Customs and immigration

Vietnamese immigration and customs officers speak quickly and formally. Captio AI captions every question so you respond accurately and confidently.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Ha Long Bay, Hoi An's ancient town, or the Cu Chi Tunnels delivering Vietnamese commentary. Captio AI captions so you follow every historical detail.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Vietnamese
94.6%

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.

Vietnamese

Why Vietnamese is hard to understand

Six tones

  • Meaning carried entirely by pitch and phonation
  • Northern Vietnamese has six lexical tones; Southern Vietnamese has five. All are carried by pitch contour and phonation type — creaky voice, glottalized register, breathy voice — none of which produce any visible lip or jaw movement. At Noi Bai airport or a Hanoi hotel desk, the tone that distinguishes 'ma' (ghost), 'mà' (but), 'má' (cheek), 'mả' (tomb), 'mã' (horse), and 'mạ' (rice seedling) is entirely invisible to a deaf traveler.

Unreleased final stops

  • Word-final consonants produce no visible burst
  • Vietnamese syllables frequently end in unreleased stops — /p/, /t/, /k/ — where the closure is made but no burst follows. At an airport counter or train station, common travel words ending in these stops complete with a closure on the lips or at the back of the mouth that produces no visible movement a deaf traveler can use to confirm word identity.

North-South dialect

  • Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City Vietnamese differ significantly
  • Northern Vietnamese (Hanoi) has six tones and a full set of initial consonants including /z/ (giờ), /v/ (về). Southern Vietnamese (HCMC) merges several tones, merges /z/ and /v/ with /j/ and /b/ respectively, and has a faster, more clipped prosody. A deaf traveler calibrated to one dialect may find the same words look and sound quite different in the other.

Creaky and breathy phonation

  • Tone voice quality — entirely acoustic, nothing on lips
  • Several Vietnamese tones are distinguished by phonation type: the ngã tone has a glottalized creak; the hỏi tone has a rising-falling contour with breathiness. These phonation types affect the voice quality, not the articulatory position. For a deaf traveler watching a Vietnamese customs officer or hotel receptionist, the phonation distinctions that carry tonal meaning are simply absent at the visual level.

Fast natural pace

  • Vietnamese spoken at speed reduces lip signal further
  • In natural conversation at immigration desks, hotel receptions, and taxi ranks, Vietnamese is spoken at a pace where the already minimal lip movement compresses further. The tone distinctions that are hard to read at careful pace become near-impossible at natural conversational speed — leaving a deaf traveler with very little visual information to work with.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Vietnam

Vietnam ranks among countries with high rates of hearing loss. According to the Department of Medical Services Administration under Vietnam's Ministry of Health, between 1,200 and 1,400 children are born with hearing impairments in Vietnam every year. Studies document a prevalence range of 5.4% to 7.9% across the country's population. Vietnam's National Statistics Office conducted a survey on persons with disabilities in 2023 that documented serious data gaps — particularly for the most marginalised groups, including those with hearing and print disabilities — underlining how limited the policy infrastructure for deaf and hard of hearing Vietnamese remains.

Vietnam's disability support framework, governed by Decree 20/2021/ND-CP and partially updated by Decree 76/2024/ND-CP, provides cash transfers for persons with disabilities — but in 2023, 86.5% of respondents in a disability survey reported these allowances were insufficient to meet minimum living needs. No nationwide universal newborn hearing screening programme exists in Vietnam as of 2024, meaning many hearing losses go undiagnosed until they significantly affect daily life. Vietnam's airports — Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat — and the Vietnam Railways network communicate passenger information through audio PA with no standardised real-time captioning for deaf travelers.

Captio AI captions Vietnamese speech in real time — whether a Noi Bai gate announcement, an immigration officer at Tan Son Nhat, or a guide along Ha Long Bay — so a deaf traveler in Vietnam 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

"Vietnam Railways PA announcements come in fast Northern Vietnamese and the stations blur past on long routes. Captio AI captions the station name on my screen the moment the announcement starts. I have not missed a stop since."

Linh N. 🇻🇳
linh.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hanoi — domestic traveler

"Immigration at Tan Son Nhat speaks fast Southern Vietnamese. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and read every question on screen. The border crossing that used to fill me with dread was the smoothest part of the journey."

Minh T. 🇻🇳
minh.t***@gmail.com
Deaf, Ho Chi Minh City — solo traveler

"The guide in Hoi An's ancient town spoke Central Vietnamese at a pace I could never follow. Captio AI captured every word — the history of the Japanese bridge, the tailoring tradition, the merchant families. I followed the full tour."

Huong P. 🇻🇳
huong.p***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Hoi An — tourist

"Da Nang airport announcements come in Vietnamese and English. Captio AI captions both. I read the gate change on screen before the display boards had even updated. That has saved me twice."

Nam V. 🇻🇳
nam.v***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Da Nang — frequent traveler

"Vietnam Railways PA announcements come in fast Northern Vietnamese and the stations blur past on long routes. Captio AI captions the station name on my screen the moment the announcement starts. I have not missed a stop since."

Linh N. 🇻🇳
linh.n***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Hanoi — domestic traveler

"Immigration at Tan Son Nhat speaks fast Southern Vietnamese. I pointed Captio AI at the officer and read every question on screen. The border crossing that used to fill me with dread was the smoothest part of the journey."

Minh T. 🇻🇳
minh.t***@gmail.com
Deaf, Ho Chi Minh City — solo traveler

"The guide in Hoi An's ancient town spoke Central Vietnamese at a pace I could never follow. Captio AI captured every word — the history of the Japanese bridge, the tailoring tradition, the merchant families. I followed the full tour."

Huong P. 🇻🇳
huong.p***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Hoi An — tourist

"Da Nang airport announcements come in Vietnamese and English. Captio AI captions both. I read the gate change on screen before the display boards had even updated. That has saved me twice."

Nam V. 🇻🇳
nam.v***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Da Nang — frequent traveler

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Vietnamese.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

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