Visis by Vinsighte — AI-Powered OCR Reading Technology for Visually Impaired Students in Nigeria

Conventional screen readers are often unaffordable or poorly tuned to African languages and accents, leaving visually impaired students in Nigerian schools without adequate access to printed text.
Founded in 2020 by Oluwatomisin Kolawole and Oyolola Caleb, Vinsighte built "Visis", a hardware device paired with an app that uses AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) to scan text and read it aloud, tuned to local accents and multiple Nigerian languages, and sold through an affordable subscription model to schools that cannot afford costly imported alternatives.
The company began by deploying 35 units across 8 schools, reaching over 5,000 learners, and says its technology has since touched more than 15,000 people in Nigeria. It has drawn support from the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship, Orange Corners, MIT Solve, Gener8tor and CcHub; generated more than $165,000 in revenue; won first prize (€6,500) in Africa's ICT4Inclusion Challenge; was recognised as an impact project at the 2023 Paris Peace Forum; and is listed as a partnership initiative on the UN's SDG Partnership Platform.
Honest caveat: reach, revenue and award figures are self-reported by the company, corroborated across several independent media profiles, rather than drawn from an independent third-party evaluation of learning or literacy outcomes.

Read the full analysis: https://minorityafrica.org/assistive-speech-software-help-nigerians-visual-impairment/