People with disabilities face many barriers across their lives. Often, they are cumulative: Lack of access to inclusive education can lead to fewer employment opportunities later in life. Such barriers are compounded by the high cost of assistive devices, making it difficult for people with disabilities to access social services, such as health care or welfare services.
Ike Agyei Mensah, a Ghanaian innovator, is looking to change that. Growing up in a community with many deaf people inspired him to create a tool called DeafCanTalk to improve communication with those without hearing disabilities, using artificial intelligence, or AI, to bridge the gap.
Devex caught up with Mensah on the sidelines of the Global AI Summit on Africa in Kigali, Rwanda, to discuss how he is using AI to meet a growing need, with the World Health Organization projecting a rise in the number of people living with hearing loss in Africa — 54 million people by 2030, up from 40 million in 2024
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How does DeafCanTalk leverage AI in its work?
DeafCanTalk is an app-based assistive technology that provides accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing people by leveraging AI to overcome the barriers to communication. In an inclusive classroom, for example, the deaf person needs an assistive tool to communicate and take notes while attending lectures. We leverage AI to convert the spoken words of the lecture into a recorded text that is saved for the deaf person, who can look at it later on to create proper notes, as well. Our app helps the deaf person to communicate in the classroom with their hearing peers who cannot understand sign language by using real-time speech-to-text. We also use AI to generate QR codes that connect deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals to interpreters on the go and are currently working on a speech-to-sign language and sign language-to-speech model using AI.
And how would a child in rural Ghana, for example, benefit from such technology?
In Ghana, there are policies that govern the usage of smart devices in classrooms. Currently, the Ministry of Education is working in partnership with other stakeholders within the education landscape, such as Mastercard Foundation, and we happen to benefit because of our partnership with the foundation. For a deaf child to use DeafCanTalk, we deploy the app onto the smart device of the deaf user. All they have to do is activate the mobile app on their phones, and then they allow the AI to function from there.
What was your inspiration to create DeafCanTalk?
I grew up in a community where most of the people around me were deaf. I’m a sign language interpreter in Ghana and also understand deaf culture. They are a marginalized group and are underserved, as a lot of focus is not going on them. Also, as we age, we will all need assistive technology. We can use it by just downloading the app and then having it on a smartphone, to help you communicate with hearing people on the go.
What barriers does DeafCanTalk face?
One of the main challenges that people with hearing impairment face is difficulty in paying for some of these services. A lot of them do not have smart devices because they cannot afford them. And in remote or rural areas, internet connectivity is a major challenge.
On our side, funding is also a challenge. While payment for the service is a sustainable revenue stream, many in the target population cannot even afford to eat three times a day. So, how do they pay for some of these solutions? Looking at profit-oriented investors, most of them are a no-go area for us because we are not making profits. So, our focus has to be on the impact investors, who are difficult to come by.
What is DeafCanTalk’s reach?
We couldn’t have done this without Mastercard Foundation, which has supported us in piloting our solution to 32 inclusive, segregated, and integrated deaf schools in Ghana. And so far, we’ve been able to impact over 10,000 active users — 6,000 of them are deaf learners who are located in various schools across Ghana. It’s overwhelming.
How has DeafCanTalk impacted the communities where it’s used?
An example is the Odupong Buhema Business School located in Ghana. It’s an inclusive school. We started looking at the performance of the students before using the assistive device, and we recorded the performance. We are using that as the baseline. Then, after using the assistive device, you can see that there has been a significant improvement in terms of learning outcomes, test scores, and even in how they engage with their peers in the classroom.
We also calculated their social interactions before using our assistive tool. You realize that before then, some of them were shy; some of them were finding it difficult to mingle with other children and their hearing peers. However, the introduction of our solution has changed the narrative.
Do you foresee this technology having an impact beyond the education sector?
The greatest challenge for the deaf person is the communication barrier. Once we tackle communication barriers, the deaf person has no disability. Our solution is sector agnostic and so it can be used in all areas. Anywhere where a deaf person needs to talk, we have to use the solution.
[Moving forward,] we need to build solutions that are user-friendly for people with disabilities in general. These people have skills and they also want to contribute to the development of a nation.
About the author
Anthony Langat
Anthony Langat is a Kenya-based Devex Contributing Reporter whose work centers on environment, climate change, health, and security. He was part of an International Consortium of Investigative Journalism’s multi-award winning 2015 investigation which unearthed the World Bank’s complacence in the evictions of indigenous people across the world. He has five years’ experience in development and investigative reporting and has been published by Al Jazeera, Mongabay, Us News & World Report, Equal Times, News Deeply, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Devex among others.
