Global Deafblindness Resource Hub — Uganda's Rollout of a Multilingual, Offline-Capable Digital Platform for Deafblind People

Deafblind people, their caregivers and educators in Uganda have had little consolidated access to practical tools, educational and healthcare resources, or peer-documented lived experience in a format usable both online and where connectivity is unreliable. To address this, Sense International developed the Global Deafblindness Resource Hub with input from Organisations of Persons with Disabilities across the eight countries where it works, and launched it internationally on 25 February 2025 at Google's Accessibility Discovery Centre in London, with Google's EMEA accessibility team supporting the platform's development.

Uganda's national rollout followed on 30 June 2025, led by Sense International Uganda together with the Ministry of State for Gender, Labour and Social Development and the Ministry of Education and Sports, and aligned explicitly with Uganda's Persons with Disabilities Act (2020), National Development Plan III and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Uganda's launch activities included radio and television talk-show appearances on digital inclusion, an official launch event addressed by Hon. Asamo Hellen Grace (State Minister for Persons with Disabilities), and free health screenings, therapy services and community sensitisation sessions at a health centre in Kalaki District.

The Hub itself aggregates resources from all eight Sense International countries and is available in seven languages (English, Kiswahili/Swahili, Hindi, Spanish, Bengali, Nepali and Romanian), designed to work both online and offline and offered free of charge specifically so that low-connectivity areas are not excluded. At the London launch, roughly 100 people attended, including delegates from Sense International's country teams; other national launches drew larger crowds — for example, over 1,000 participants at Romania's school-based events and 1,000-plus attendees at an associated event in India — though no comparable attendance figure specific to Uganda's own launch has been published.

Coverage of the Uganda launch also recorded an unresolved access concern: local disability advocate Edward Otim noted that people who cannot afford a smartphone still face a barrier to using the Hub, even with offline functionality built in. As the platform launched only in mid-2025, no independent evaluation of its usage or outcomes in Uganda has yet been published.

Read the full analysis: https://www.senseinternational.org.uk/hub-local-launches/