Putting Your Money, Where Your Mouth Is (digital Accessibility)
“Accessibility allows us to tap into everyone’s potential.” — Debra Ruh.
In recent years, the world has witnessed a rapid integration of technology in various sectors, including education. Educational technology, or EdTech, has the potential to revolutionize learning by providing access to quality education resources and opportunities. However, in Kenya, as in many other countries, there is a pressing need to address the issue of accessibility in the EdTech space. Specifically, digital accessibility.
Digital accessibility refers to the design and development of digital products and technologies in a way that ensures equal access and usability for all individuals, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. It aims to remove barriers and provide inclusive experiences for people with disabilities, enabling them to access, interact with, and benefit from digital content and services.
Digital accessibility encompasses various aspects, including websites, mobile applications, software, electronic documents, and other digital media. It involves considering the diverse needs and capabilities of individuals with disabilities, such as those with visual, auditory, cognitive, motor, or neurological impairments.
This Global Accessibility Awareness Day, let us talk about the state of digital accessibility in Kenya, and how it impacts special needs learners.
On paper, the state of digital accessibility in Kenya is excellent.
In May last year, Kenya became the first African country in Africa to develop digital accessibility standards for people living with a disability. KEBS (The Kenya Bureau of Standards) launched a partnership with inABLE to develop a mark that certifies a product or service’s accessibility. Unfortunately, since the announcement, we have yet to hear of any developments on this front. We don’t know if the standards gazetted have been implemented, and the extent to which they have been implemented. The 2023 Report evaluating Disability Mainstreaming for the 2021–2022 period is also silent on this and other matters.
This leads to the following conclusion; in reality, the state of digital accessibility is complicated. Especially within the realm of education.
According to the Uwezo Learning Report 2021, approximately 25% of students living with a disability either dropped out of school or never enrolled in the first place. This means that students with a disability are more than three times as likely as to not attend school, as students without a disability. As Theodota Ressa notes in her 2021 paper:
“Low enrollment is caused by a culture of deficit, inadequate resources in public schools, and a shortage of special education teachers.”
This culture of deficit, then, justifies the lack of continued investment in special needs education; particularly within the realm of digital technology. A 2022 study on the efficacy of the digital literacy programme in special needs schools in Nairobi County revealed that the Ministry had not delivered specialised digital learning devices to the special needs schools surveyed. And when devices were supplied “no concrete evidence” could be found that these devices had been adapted for specific disabilities. This goes further than the technology to the curriculum itself as the report also notes that “most of the learning materials in the market are not adapted.”If these resources are not available in Nairobi County — the wealthiest county in the country with a GDP higher than some island nations — then what can we say about the rest of the country?
Can we really expect digital accessibility to be operationalised when students with disabilities lack the tools to go online?
As a result, it becomes clear that it may not matter if digital platforms are more accessible if their future users (i.e. the special needs learners of the present) are not trained to use them at a young age. Without addressing the problem of accessibility from the root (i.e. the lack of awareness and training in these technologies), the Government risks perpetuating and further entrenching the problems of inaccessibility.
Therefore, what can be done about this?
First, we must provide special needs schools with the tools they need. This is non-negotiable. If we truly want to create an inclusive digital society that everyone can benefit from, irrespective of their socioeconomic class or disability, then we need to make sure they know how to use the technologies that will define the future. This knowledge starts in schools. It starts with allowing learners with disabilities to envision themselves in these spaces. This future can only be enabled by properly outfitting our schools. All of our schools. This means investing in assistive technologies and calling upon governments, NGOs and faith-based organisations to do the same.
Take STEAMLabs Africa, for example. Upon launching our Creative Coding with Scratch Book, we recognised that it was not accessible to the students who stood to benefit the most. As such, we are actively engaging with industry leaders in special needs education to adapt our book to the special needs curriculum and adaptive technologies. Our vision of empowering every learner demands nothing less.
Don’t you agree?
Second, once these resources are available, there must be follow-through. In 2018, UNESCO trialled the world’s first universally accessible digital textbook, with promising results. A student from Kambui Primary School for the Deaf in Kiambu said:
“I can use it myself.”This book gave students greater ownership of their learning experiences; empowering them to learn in ways that accommodated their disabilities. Yet, since then, no progress has been made. This suggests that solutions to the problems plaguing special needs education exists. But without the political will to implement them, they will remain mere fantasies to some of the most vulnerable learners in our society.
Altogether, it’s time to put our money where our mouth is.
If we say we care about enriching digital accessibility, then we must do something to empower the people who stand to benefit the most from this effort.
We must empower the digital users of the future to make use of the adaptations made for them. Or else risk building a digital future that perpetuates the inequalities of our analogue present.