Wasel — Egypt's Arabic Sign-Language AI Chatbot for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Citizens

Egypt is home to an estimated 7 million people with disabilities, and deaf and hard-of-hearing citizens have historically faced barriers to accessing public health guidance and government information, a gap made acute during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wasel ("connected" in Arabic) is an AI-driven chatbot developed by UNDP Egypt together with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and technology partner Avaya. It converts spoken or typed Arabic into video-based Arabic Sign Language delivered by an on-screen presenter, and displays subtitles so hearing users can follow along too. It launched first as a COVID-19 symptom-checking tool aligned with WHO and Ministry of Health protocols, then broadened to general accessible-service queries. It is hosted on Egypt's official accessible-services platform, Tamkeen, and distributed as apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

UNDP Egypt reports the chatbot has reached over 25,000 beneficiaries, and both UNDP and independent tech press describe it as the first Arabic sign-language chatbot technology deployed in Africa and the Middle East.

The reach figure and "first in region" claim currently rest on UNDP's own reporting rather than an independent third-party audit, and UNDP's own materials give inconsistent launch dates (2019–2021) — the underlying service and its continued availability are well documented, but precise metrics should be read as UNDP's self-reported figures.

Read the full analysis: https://siliconangle.com/2020/09/18/ai-powered-chatbots-improving-services-disabled/