What is the name of your organization?
ASSISTIVE-ED LTD
What is the name of your solution?
AssistiveMath
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Accessible, Equitable, and Quality Math Education
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Nairobi, Kenya
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
Kenya
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
For over 1.4 million students with visual impairments, Math has been a challenge because of the inaccessibility in and around it. Currently used methods of learning and preparing math for the visually impaired (VI) are too expensive for low-middle income families to afford, i.e., orbit readers ($800) and talking calculators ($700), therefore locking them out of accessing basic math education. Braille is also expensive (Braille machine @ $800 and Braille paper @ $25/ream) and inflexible to changes. Consequently, most textbooks aren’t available in Braille, making self-study/independent revision almost impossible. For teachers, it’s time-consuming to adapt teaching material, administer exams, and give feedback because Braille transcription takes up to two weeks and is unforgiving of errors.
E-learning has also been challenged with inaccessibility when learning materials, i.e., blogs, videos, are not perceivable to the VI, as more math resources are visual and exclusive to the VI.
Overall, these challenges affect the quality of Math education, make the V.I. overdependent on other students and teachers for support, and lead to a negative attitude towards Math and STEM subjects. Therefore, most students are forced to discontinue their dreams in math or math-related careers
What is your solution?
We’re transforming Math education to be more inclusive and equitable for the visually impaired(VI) by providing learners with inclusive access to math through assistive technologies and AI while giving teachers the tools and know-how to create an inclusive learning environment. We achieve this through a multi-sided app built with the core principle of accessibility for our users.
For students, we provide/enable:
1. Affordable access to talking calculators
2. Accessible authoring & presentation of math with their screen readers
3. Accessible discussion spaces for collaborative learning among the VI and the sighted.
4. Adaptive AI assistant suited for the VI for self-study & independence
For teachers:
1. Real-time accessibility for accessible in-classroom instruction.
2. Fast, affordable, and accessible preparation of class materials, tests/exams, and means of grading/giving feedback
3. Faster braille-text transcription for easy grading of braille worksheets
4. A knowledge base to train teachers on adapted teaching for the VI
For exam centers:
1. Accessible exam preparation and facilitation
For all three/any universal user:
1. An accessibility plugin for the transformation of online blogs, videos, and other resources to accessible formats.
MVP Product Demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kVZGVLR3CsmxpdgsE14CWybEsHs3CIPb/view?usp=sharing
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
The VI make up 1.5% of the population in developing countries ( 518,000 in Kenya, with 15,500 being children), and most of these children come from first-generation or low-income families. The main barrier to quality education, therefore, has been the huge financial constraint on accessing assistive technologies for their education, i.e, braille machines, orbit readers, and talking calculators (cumulatively costing $2300).
The education policies in Kenya and most African countries also don’t favor the visually impaired. Adapted Curricula are prepared for the visually impaired, which omit some of the foundational math skills required for higher education. The result is a lack of proficiency to pursue college-level education in math or math-related courses, therefore limiting them from pursuing STEM careers.
Through AssistiveMath, we wish to level the playing field of access to quality Math education for the visually impaired while making it affordable and equitable to low-income families. By transforming the math classroom to be more inclusive for the visually impaired and the sighted, we want to trigger a change in policies that would favor the visually impaired and allow them to pursue Math/STEM with the assurance of inclusivity in any educational institution across Kenya.
