When Emmanuel Quartey temporarily lost hearing in one ear in February 2024, the impact was immediate. Everyday conversations became frustrating, and even simple interactions required more effort than he was used to. It was the first time he had experienced, even briefly, how losing one sense could reshape everyday life. Then a friend asked him a question that would redirect his ambitions as a young engineer.
“Imagine it was your eyes. What would you do?”
At the time, Quartey was a second-year Information Technology student at Pentecost University in Ghana, experimenting with computer vision and artificial intelligence. He had already spent years building automation systems, robotics projects and agricultural technologies. Assistive technology had never crossed his mind.
But the question stayed with him.
As he continued experimenting with computer vision, he began wondering how it could be used to solve challenges faced by people with disabilities.
A few days later, another friend cancelled a meeting because she was accompanying her visually impaired friend, Angela Kona, to the hospital.
When they eventually met, Quartey demonstrated a computer vision project that could recognise currency and extract printed text. Watching Kona use it convinced him he was building something that could make a real difference.
“That was when I realised this shouldn’t remain just a project,” he says.
Two years later, that experiment has evolved into Steward Vision Assistant, an AI-powered platform that helps blind and visually impaired users recognise currency, identify objects, read printed text and better navigate their surroundings.
Building for African realities
Steward is emerging at a time when advances in artificial intelligence are reshaping assistive technology. Capabilities that once required years of specialised engineering, including optical character recognition (OCR), computer vision, scene description and speech recognition, can now be built on top of existing AI models, allowing smaller teams to focus on adapting the technology to local needs rather than developing every capability from scratch.
The shift comes as access to assistive technology has become a growing priority across Africa. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that more than 200 million people in the region need at least one assistive product, a figure expected to double by 2050. Among them are an estimated 26 million persons with some degree of visual impairment, many of whom rely on assistive technologies to read, navigate and interact more independently.
Yet despite the scale of the need, many of today’s most advanced assistive technologies were designed with users in developed markets in mind, and the cost of importing them can run into thousands of dollars.
AI-powered devices such as Envision Glasses, which start at about $1,900, can read printed text, recognise faces, identify objects and describe a user’s surroundings, while navigation aids such as WeWalk, which costs more than $600, use artificial intelligence and sensors to help blind users move more safely and independently.
While those products have expanded what is possible for blind users, Quartey believed they could be adapted further for African contexts. Rather than replicate existing devices, he set out to build a platform shaped by the realities of the people he hoped would use it.
“When we looked at some of the existing smart glasses, the currency detection didn’t even include the Ghanaian cedi,” he says. “If a Ghanaian bought those glasses, one of the most important features simply wouldn’t work.”
The same challenge extended to speech recognition. Voice models trained primarily on American or British accents often struggle with African speech patterns.
Quartey says his team has begun training its models to recognise Ghanaian accents while also exploring support for regional languages such as Hausa and Swahili. As development continues, it also plans to add Ghanaian languages, including Twi and Ga.
For Olamide Daniel, a disability inclusion consultant, that local focus is what makes products like Steward significant. He says Africa has long depended on imported assistive technologies that are often expensive and not always designed for the realities of users on the continent.
“It’s encouraging to see people thinking about building assistive technology for local use,” Daniel says. “Many of the products we use come from abroad, and they’re expensive to bring in. Envision AI, for example, offers similar capabilities, but it’s beyond the reach of many ordinary Africans. If Steward can deliver on what it promises and remain affordable, it could make a real difference.”
From prototype to practical tool
Today, Steward consists of two devices designed to support blind and visually impaired users.
The first is a pair of AI-powered smart glasses that combine a camera, computer vision and generative AI to interpret visual information.
Users simply point the glasses at printed text, currency, everyday objects or unfamiliar environments.
The system analyses what the camera captures before delivering spoken descriptions through audio. It can also summarise lengthy documents into shorter explanations, making printed information easier to access.
Quartey says the text-reading feature was inspired in part by visits to schools for blind students, where he found Braille libraries often stocked with outdated materials while newer textbooks remained inaccessible.
The second is a handheld device that uses ultrasonic sensors to detect obstacles above ground level.
As users move closer to an object, the device responds with increasingly stronger vibrations, helping them identify hazards such as hanging objects, signposts and tables that a white cane might not immediately detect.
That, however, was not Quartey’s original plan.
“When I started building it, I thought I could replace the white cane,” he says. “But when I engaged with visually impaired users, I realised the white cane actually does much more than I thought. It gives tactile feedback that technology cannot easily replace.”
Those conversations reshaped Steward’s design. Rather than replacing the white cane, Quartey repositioned the handheld device as a companion, helping users detect obstacles beyond the cane’s reach while preserving a mobility aid they already trusted.
Feedback also reshaped the hardware itself. During early testing with members of the Ghana Blind Union, participants said the first prototype of the glasses was too heavy and suggested improvements to the frame size and button placement.
Quartey says those conversations informed several design changes before the current version.
William, one of the visually impaired users who tested Steward, says the object detection feature left a strong first impression.
“It was able to detect things in my room, and it was lovely,” he says. “I give it a pass. The first prototype was quite heavy, but it has improved. If it can become even lighter and more comfortable for extended use, it would be better.”
User testing also revealed an unexpected use for the platform. While Quartey expected users to value practical features such as currency recognition and text reading, many were drawn to the environment description tool.
During one testing session, members of the Ghana Blind Union used it to hear descriptions of friends they had met only after losing their sight.
“They started using it to describe what their friends looked like,” Quartey says. “Some of them had imagined their friends looked different.”
Building Steward
Before attracting institutional support, Quartey financed Steward’s earliest prototypes by teaching robotics and STEM classes at private schools.
“I realised that if I waited until I had funding, I would never start,” he says.
Quartey’s experience reflects a broader challenge facing assistive technology innovators across Africa, where funding remains one of the biggest obstacles to moving promising products from prototype to market.
According to AT4D, an initiative that supports assistive technology innovation, a large percent of assistive technology entrepreneurs identify funding as their biggest barrier to entering the market.
Those financial constraints were evident in Steward’s earliest prototype. Unable to source suitable frames for the smart glasses, Quartey improvised with PVC pipes. The prototype worked, but it was bulky and heavy. Early testers told him they would struggle to wear it for long because of the discomfort.
Rather than settling for that design, he taught himself 3D modelling and printing to create a lighter, more ergonomic frame.
Each round of user feedback informed the next iteration, reinforcing his belief that the best assistive technology is built with the people who use it, not merely for them.
Steward’s progress also depended on opportunities beyond the lab.
In November 2024, Quartey teamed up with Kona, whose early interaction with his computer vision project had first convinced him it could become more than an academic experiment. Competing under the name Team CodeCraft Mavericks, they won Ghana’s Disability Inclusive Hackathon. Quartey says every cedi of the prize money was reinvested in improving the product’s design, functionality and user experience.
Affordability has since become one of Steward’s guiding principles. Rather than opting for premium materials or expensive components, Quartey says the team deliberately balances performance with cost to keep the technology within reach of the people it is intended to serve.
William, one of the visually impaired users who tested Steward, believes affordability could ultimately determine whether products like Steward reach the people who need them most.
“I told him the price is not that much,” he says. “But in Africa, where people struggle to pay for a lot of things, getting 2,000 cedis is quite a lot.”
He hopes Steward can partner with governments, disability organisations and other institutions to subsidise the cost, making the technology more accessible to blind and visually impaired people across the region.
Looking ahead
As Steward continues its pilot in Ghana, Quartey says the team’s immediate priorities are refining existing features, improving the speed and performance of its AI models, and expanding language support.
Although the platform already recognises Ghanaian accents, the team is working to add more local languages, including Twi and Ga.
It is also exploring support for other widely spoken African languages as it prepares to expand beyond Ghana.
Securing the funding needed to move from pilot testing to wider deployment remains another priority.
Over the next year, Quartey hopes to reach at least 1,500 users, starting in Ghana before expanding into other West African countries, with Nigeria next on the roadmap.
For Quartey, Steward is about more than building another AI product.
It is about demonstrating that assistive technology for African users should be designed around their realities, rather than adapted as an afterthought.
“If technology is supposed to improve people’s lives,” he says, “then it should improve life for everyone.”
True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
