Accessible Digital Textbooks — UNICEF, eKitabu and Kenya's Ministry of Education Pilot Inclusive Learning for 130 Students with Disabilities

An estimated 80% of children with disabilities in Kenya are out of school, and the country had few curriculum-aligned learning materials for learners with visual, hearing or intellectual disabilities. From 2017, UNICEF Kenya, the Ministry of Education, KICD and ed-tech company eKitabu worked together to close that gap.

The partners aimed to pilot an Accessible Digital Textbook — built on Universal Design for Learning principles — for first-grade environmental activities, produced in audio, Kenyan Sign Language video and simplified-language versions.

The pilot, seeded with roughly US$200,000 from UNICEF's Innovation Fund, the UN Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Finnish National Committee for UNICEF and Nokia, reached 130 students with disabilities across 25 schools, with teachers trained in assistive technology and UDL pedagogy. In 2019, eKitabu, the Kenya Publishers Association, the Ministry of Education, KISE and KICD ran a national Content Development Challenge producing 70 new accessible titles.

The pilot reached its target group of 130 students with disabilities across 25 schools, and the 2019 Content Development Challenge extended the approach into a wider publisher ecosystem, producing 70 new accessible titles for the Competency-Based Curriculum.

Reported figures come from UNICEF and eKitabu programme documentation; no independently published evaluation of learning-outcome gains from the pilot was found, so the evidence documents reach and programme design rather than measured learning impact.