“Now we’re growing the eKitabu team with people from the deaf community,” says Will Clurman, co-founder of eKitabu. In addition to the opportunity to win up to $250,000 for the project, eKitabu is already seeing the impact of the prize on its network with international development organizations as well as people in the Deaf Community across Kenya. “We also want to lower the cost of creating these books, which in the past has been expensive and unsustainable economically.” “We want to establish Studio KSL as a resource for both publishers and content developers in Kenya to create visual storybooks and, in particular, create new stories,” Utterback says. eKitabu saw an opportunity to leverage the prize to take Studio KSL even further. In 2017, as Studio KSL was in development, All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development announced its Sign On For Literacy prize, which sought innovations that increase literacy outcomes for deaf children in low-resource settings. The result was the development of eKitabu’s Studio KSL to help the Deaf Community and local content creators integrate Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) videos into early grade reading materials, thereby producing visual storybooks in support of Kenya’s new inclusive education policy. According to MoE data, deaf children made up more than half of all learners with disabilities in Kenya’s public school system, so adapting learning materials for Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) acquisition and literacy was flagged a top priority. With that vision as a personal and company priority for Matt and eKitabu, it was a perfect complement when, in 2016, the Ministry of Education in Kenya approached the EdTech startup to create accessible content for the country’s new digital literacy program, which involved the rollout of more than a million tablets and laptops to learners in primary schools across Kenya. Sign On For Literacy prize finalist eKitabu films a sign language video for its Studio KSL platform, which documents Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) in a visual glossary and produces KSL videos for integration into accessible books. All Children Reading and Sign On For Literacy gave us the resources and support to focus on harnessing technology to deliver inclusive education.” “We always knew e-books provided accessibility features that print books don’t. “We’ve always seen technology as a way to lower costs and also increase access,” says Matt Utterback, co-founder of eKitabu. When EdTech company eKitabu was founded in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2012, a seed was planted not only to increase access to books and educational resources for children across the country, but to expand that access to a group historically overlooked in education: children with disabilities. During International Week of the Deaf, Sign On For Literacy prize finalist eKitabu shares how technology is opening literacy and learning opportunities for deaf children across Kenya.
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