Captio AI
🦻 Accessibility + 💻 Productivity App

Welsh 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 Cardiff Airport (CWL) and on the announcements across Welsh transport, calls come in Welsh and English. Captio AI captions both languages so you catch every gate change and boarding call.

🚂Train stations and public transport

Transport for Wales trains and Cardiff's buses announce platforms and stops in Welsh and English. 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 Cardiff Bay or a guesthouse in Snowdonia explaining check-in, breakfast, and the way to the trailhead in Welsh. Place Captio AI on the desk and follow every word.

🗺️Navigating and asking for help

Asking the way through Cardiff's arcades or a village in Eryri (Snowdonia). Fast Welsh from a local — Captio AI captions the reply so you find the route the first time.

🛃Customs and immigration

Staff and information desks at Welsh ports and airports switch between Welsh and English. Captio AI captions every question and instruction so you respond accurately.

🎭Tours and activities

A guide at Caernarfon Castle, Conwy, or the slate landscape of Eryri delivering Welsh commentary. Captio AI captions so you follow the full history behind each site.

Performance

Most accurate and fastest models

Welsh
85.7%

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.

Welsh

Why Welsh is hard to understand

Consonant mutations

  • The start of a word changes shape
  • Welsh mutates the initial consonant of a word depending on grammar — soft, nasal, and aspirate mutations turn a 'p' into a 'b', a 'b' into an 'f', a 'c' into a 'g' or 'ngh'. The word for a place or a thing can begin differently from sentence to sentence. A deaf traveler who lip-reads the base form of a word finds the crucial first consonant has been swapped out at a ticket counter or hotel desk.

The ll and ch sounds

  • Sounds English lacks, made without clear lip cues
  • Welsh has the voiceless lateral 'll' (as in Llanelli) and the fricative 'ch' (as in bach), sounds produced with the tongue and airflow rather than distinctive lip shapes. On a place name over a station PA — and Welsh place names are full of them — these sounds give a lip-reader almost nothing to work with.

North–south divide

  • Welsh vowels shift between north and south
  • Northern and southern Welsh differ mainly in the vowels: the north keeps sounds and diphthongs the south has merged, so the same word carries different vowel shapes on the lips depending on where you are. A deaf traveler calibrated to south Welsh in Cardiff meets a noticeably different mouth in Gwynedd or Anglesey.

Welsh–English code-switching

  • Two languages woven together in daily speech
  • Bilingual Wales moves between Welsh and English constantly — a shopkeeper or guide can start a sentence in Welsh, drop into English for a word, and switch back. A deaf traveler reading lips has to track two phonological systems at once, with no visual marker of where one language stops and the other begins.

Stress and clipped endings

  • Penultimate stress leaves the last syllable weak
  • Welsh stresses the second-to-last syllable of most words, leaving the final syllable weak and quickly spoken. In fast, casual speech that unstressed ending clips further, so grammatical detail carried there fades on the lips just when a traveler needs it.

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The Challenge

Hearing loss and travel accessibility in Wales

RNID represents over 900,000 people in Wales who are deaf, have hearing loss, or have tinnitus — a very large share of a nation of just over three million. Estimates of the number who are specifically deaf or hard of hearing run into the hundreds of thousands, while the 2021 Census recorded around 22,000 people across England and Wales using British Sign Language as their main language. Behind the statistics is a stark access gap: RNID Cymru has found that 35% of deaf and hard of hearing patients say they have been denied the communication support they needed, and 56% have had to rely on a partner, family member, or friend to relay information for them.

Wales has taken sign language seriously in law — it now has its own legislation to protect and promote British Sign Language — but that has not closed the everyday communication gap on the transport network. Cardiff Airport, Transport for Wales rail services, and the bus networks that reach the national parks and the coast all communicate through spoken announcements, and Wales's great tourist draws — Caernarfon and Conwy castles, the Eryri (Snowdonia) landscape, the heritage railways — are experienced largely through spoken guiding. Welsh place names, dense with sounds English speakers rarely master, are exactly the words a deaf traveler most needs to catch.

Captio AI captions Welsh and English in real time — a boarding call at Cardiff Airport, a Transport for Wales platform announcement, a castle guide at Caernarfon — so a deaf traveler in Wales follows every change and every story 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

"Transport for Wales announcements come in Welsh and English and the platform noise at Cardiff Central is bad. I used to miss half of it. Captio AI captions both languages the moment they play, so I catch the platform change and get on the right train."

Rhys D. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
rhys.d***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Cardiff — frequent traveler

"North Welsh vowels are different from the south Welsh I lip-read best, and the mutations change the start of words on me. Captio AI captioned the guesthouse check-in in local Welsh — the room, breakfast, the path up to the castle — without a single repeat."

Carys W. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
carys.w***@gmail.com
Deaf, Caernarfon — north Wales resident

"The guide on the heritage line switched between Welsh and English about the slate and the valleys. I would normally catch the English bits and lose the Welsh. With Captio AI I read both — the whole story of the line — for the first time."

Dylan J. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
dylan.j***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Swansea — heritage-railway traveler

"Welsh place names over a station speaker are impossible for me — all those ll and ch sounds give me nothing to lip-read. Captio AI puts the name on my screen spelled out. I finally know which stop is mine in Eryri without asking three people."

Elin P. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
elin.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bangor — Eryri tourist

"Transport for Wales announcements come in Welsh and English and the platform noise at Cardiff Central is bad. I used to miss half of it. Captio AI captions both languages the moment they play, so I catch the platform change and get on the right train."

Rhys D. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
rhys.d***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Cardiff — frequent traveler

"North Welsh vowels are different from the south Welsh I lip-read best, and the mutations change the start of words on me. Captio AI captioned the guesthouse check-in in local Welsh — the room, breakfast, the path up to the castle — without a single repeat."

Carys W. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
carys.w***@gmail.com
Deaf, Caernarfon — north Wales resident

"The guide on the heritage line switched between Welsh and English about the slate and the valleys. I would normally catch the English bits and lose the Welsh. With Captio AI I read both — the whole story of the line — for the first time."

Dylan J. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
dylan.j***@gmail.com
Severely deaf, Swansea — heritage-railway traveler

"Welsh place names over a station speaker are impossible for me — all those ll and ch sounds give me nothing to lip-read. Captio AI puts the name on my screen spelled out. I finally know which stop is mine in Eryri without asking three people."

Elin P. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
elin.p***@gmail.com
Hard of hearing, Bangor — Eryri tourist

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Navigate confidently in Welsh.

Captio AI is free to start

Download for free

Download on theApp Store