Nancy Wangui is a mother, a wife with a bubbly personality, and is on top of her career. She cooks, rides bicycles, but most of all, she loves her iPhone. To many, the iPhone is a luxury phone, but for Nancy Wangui, it’s her eyes.
It enables her to be informed and helps her communicate with the rest of the world.
Those who have interacted with Nancy can attest they don’t notice anything out of the ordinary until she talks about it. She is legally blind.
Like Nancy, technology has continued to assist many blind persons in being self-reliant, accessing content, information, and even advance their careers and education. According to Irene Kirika, Founder of inABLE, people with disability need technology to help them access information to grow in their fields.
To drive access to technology to the blind, Safaricom launched M-PESA Voice, which helps the blind access information about their M-PESA accounts by dialing 456.
The success has led the company to commit to adopt the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) to navigate the M-PESA user journey using IVR.
Other initiatives include Safaricom’s partnership with the Dot Corporation to make the Dot Watch. The watch is synchronised with their phones and this enables the blind to read their messages.
Learn more about what technology does for the blind.
This story is part of Safaricom@20 celebrations. For 20 years, Safaricom has developed new technologies and innovations to support and enable Kenyans to communicate, connect and to go beyond.
