To take digital accessibility and assistive technology in Africa to the next level, inABLE has begun organizing the fourth annual Inclusive Africa Conference scheduled on May 29 – 31, 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, and virtually. The agenda discussions will focus on promoting the advancement of digital accessibility and assistive technology for persons with disabilities in Africa.

In 2022, inABLE organized the third annual and first in-person Inclusive Africa Conference. This event received global attention through sponsorships and partnerships with global tech leaders, influential keynote speakers, and global and regional disability leaders including Disability Rights Advocate Haben Girma, USA/Eritrea, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer, Microsoft, USA, Phil Cotton Director, Human Capital Development, Mastercard Foundation, Ghana among others. Our sponsors included The Mastercard Foundation, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

“Accessibility is at the heart of what we do at inABLE. Over the last three years this event has created a platform for disability and accessibility experts, people with lived experiences, policymakers, researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, businesses, governments and others to share knowledge and created awareness across Africa about the importance of leaving no one behind.”, said Irene Mbari-Kirika, Founder and Executive Director, inABLE.

As a result of global sponsorship and partnership, the May 2022 event saw over 3,000 delegates register and 63 global and local knowledgeable experts, from 64 different countries tackling different topics.

inABLE also hosted 14 live-watch parties in 14 African countries with over 500 attendees in partnership with Google and leading disability organizations. inABLE also recruited and hosted about 20 African youthful leaders with lived experience from Rwanda, Burundi, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Togo, Benin, Central African Republic, and Cameroon to engage with more participants and spread awareness before, during and after the conference.

Bright M Bwalya, Developer of the life-saving Seizure Assistant application that ensures people with epilepsy get help whenever needed because it has a synchronized smart seizure detector, emerged the winner of the second Digital Accessibility Innovations Award. He won $10,000 courtesy of Google and he’s currently working with inABLE to improve the User Experience and the app will be re-launched before the next conference.

The 2023 conference will be made accessible through sign language interpretation, language interpretation, live captioning and subtitles on all videos.