NAIROBI — In a school for the deaf in Kenya, children signed their excitement as a team demonstrated how a robotic arm could revolutionise their studies.Roughly 300,000 children in the east African nation have a hearing impairment, according to the Kenya Society for Deaf Children, but just 20,000 were enrolled in schools as of 2024.
Kenyan start-up ZeroBionic, co-founded by 22-year-old Norah Kimathi, hopes to tackle some of the educational difficulties they face.
It has built a mechanical hand that can translate a teachers' voice into sign language in real time, allowing deaf children to learn alongside their hearing counterparts.
For the pupils at the Kasarani Treeside Secondary School for the Deaf in Nairobi, there is another element of the technology that is even more promising.
The robotic arms are trialled by deaf teachers to record and store signs using a bodysuit, which ZeroBionic imported for the task.
