A 23-year-old university graduate, Staff Nyoni, has developed a digital assistive learning application to enhance education for learners with visual impairments in Malawi.
Developed under the Blind Classroom Initiative, through financial support from Save the Children International (SCI), the application offers features like screen-readers, text-to-speech and magnification software, allowing learners to engage with digital content and educational materials more effectively.
Staff Nyoni – the brains behind the app and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Access Ability Africa – said the application is already being piloted in two schools, where learners have registered significant improvements in their performance.
“The app uses AI [artificial intelligence] to provide a voice-based learning to children with visual impairments. Currently, we’re in two schools where have installed 20 systems, but the vision to expand to more schools in our second phase by installing at least 140 systems,” he said.
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Nyoni said he was driven to develop the app by the desire to break barriers in the education system, where only able-bodied learners enjoy their full rights while neglecting the visually impaired students.
He said Blind Classromm app provides interactive elements and personalized learning paths that make education for visually impaired students more engaging and effective.
“So from a personal experience. I have lived with my grandfather who was visually impaired. I’ve been with him, interacted closely. I saw the challenges, which he was facing. So fast forward, when he moved to Mzuzu, where I was staying with my parents, there was a girl with special visual impairment, but the problem would go so much that she stopped going to school. So I observed the challenges from the two scenarios. So when I joined ICT at Daeyang University, I saw it as an opportunity, because I was studying a problem that allowed me to create something. So that’s when I started researching, together with support from the school, to come up with this kind of project,” he narrated.
Nyoni thanked SCI for providing the financial support that enabled him to actualize his dream of contributing towards bridging gaps in the special needs education sector.
“Moving forward, I would like to see is equality in education. We should all be moving together, because it’s a pity now, because when you go to the schools, you find a visually impaired learner at age of 17 is still in Standard 5, which doesn’t make sense I’m 23, but I’m here doing this innovation. But see that 23 years, you see someone still in primary school. It’s not that they can’t move as we move, but it’s just that they don’t have those resources to boost them in the academic performances,” he said.
Added Nyoni, “So moving forward, what I envision is to see is equality in education. If a 17-year-old who is visually impaired is in a secondary school, the same must apply to so there should be that inclusion. We should move together. So as we envision 2063 development target as a nation, we can’t reach that far if we’re leaving some people behind.”
SCI Innovations Manager, Bright Chidzumeni, said Staff Nyoni is one of the innovators whom they spotted in 2022 when the organization wanted to identify young people with talent to suggest and develop solutions to empower children in different thematic areas in education, in health and climate change.
Chidzumeni said SCI wanted young people with innovative ideas to support them in developing those solutions.
“So he was identified through the Hackathon that we facilitated where he applied, and he emerged successful to be incubated, incubated in he program. Since then, SCI has been providing technical support to ensure that the innovation makes sense in our context, also achieves the objectives of the innovation itself.”
National Commission for Science and Technology (NCST) Chief Technology Transfer Officer, Isaac Chingota, described the Blind Classroom app as an important tool in promoting inclusive education in Malawi and beyond.
But Chingota was quick to emphasize the need for authorities and stakeholders in the education sector to adopt and make full use of the app in their schools.
“This is very critical, especially when we consider what one of the enablers of Malawi 2063 is human capital development, and we cannot afford to develop a human capital when others are being left behind because of visual impairment. So I think this is very critical, and from NCST point, we always say science and technology can come from anywhere, and it can come from even people with visual impairments themselves,” he said.
Meanwhile, Save the Children has provided over MK38 million towards upscaling of the Blind Classroom innovation to 14 schools.
