AuraLearn: AI-Powered Accessible Learning for Visually Impaired Students in Kenya
AuraLearn is a Kenyan AI accessibility platform that converts visual academic content into navigable audio plus haptic feedback for blind and low-vision students.
Auralearn is a Nairobi-built platform that turns visual academic content — diagrams, charts, maps, music scores — into navigable 3D audio with haptic feedback. It is built for visually impaired secondary and university students in Kenya, with a curriculum that speaks to KCSE and Kenyan CBC realities first, and the rest of the Global South second.
Why Auralearn Exists
In Kenya, roughly 750,000 people live with significant visual impairment. Inclusive primary schooling has expanded fast, but secondary and tertiary visual content — KCSE Geography maps, KNEC Mathematics graphs, KCSE Music staff notation, the cell diagrams in every Biology paper — has remained stubbornly inaccessible. Auralearn was built by Victor Kariuki Wanja to close that gap with a technology stack that any phone with a browser can run.
How It Works
A student takes a photo of a graph, map, or diagram and uploads it on /analyze. Within seconds the AI parses the image into four structured chapters — Overview, Data Points, Trends, and Exam Insight — that the student navigates with the number keys 1 to 4. Distinct haptic patterns vibrate the phone to mark chapter changes, trend direction, music beats, map borders and so on, so the student can feel structure as well as hear it.
Built for the Kenyan Curriculum
- Geography — Kenyan relief maps, choropleth population maps, climate zones, settlement patterns. Each border crossing pulses; rivers and lakes carry their own water haptic.
- Mathematics — Bar charts, pie charts, histograms, scatter diagrams. Rising and falling trend haptics let a student feel the direction of a dataset before a single number is read.
- Music — Treble and bass clefs, time signatures, dynamics. Quarter notes, bar lines, and rests each have a distinct vibration so the staff is felt as a rhythm, not just heard.
- Biology — Plant and animal cells, the digestive system, photosynthesis and respiration. Each labelled organelle ticks against the fingertip.
- Business Studies — Demand-supply diagrams, break-even charts, organisational structures, SWOT matrices.
Accessible By Design
Every Auralearn page is built to WCAG 2.1 AA. Skip links, focus rings, keyboard navigation for the audio player, ARIA-live regions for analysis results, and a Q&A panel that preserves diagram context so follow-up questions get grounded answers — not textbook generalities. Read more in our guide to accessible learning tools for blind university students and our deeper look at how blind students in Kenya study maps, graphs and STEM visuals.
How a Student Gets Started
- Create a free account at /register.
- Open Analyze and drop in the first diagram, map or score you need to study.
- Navigate the four chapters with keys 1 to 4 and use the Q&A panel for follow-ups.
- Browse the Library to find curated CBC-aligned courses in Music, Geography, Mathematics, Biology and Business Studies.
Support the Work
Auralearn is free for visually impaired students. The work is funded by donors, institutional pilots, and a small group of partner universities. If you want to help more students access the platform, make a donation. Every shilling is tied to product development, student access, and validation research with Kenyan universities — full breakdown on the donate page.