A Good in Progress collection
People building more accessible lives with AI
These four stories from the Good in Progress archive follow people using AI to make everyday tasks more accessible. A diagram a screen reader skips. An account number too far away to read. Groceries someone else keeps offering to choose. The people in these stories know those frustrations well, and they started building their own ways through them.
Curated by Good in Progress. Collection updated .
What are real examples of people using AI for accessibility?
John-Ross Rizzo and his lab work on tools for shopping and finding the way through buildings. Mark Morad built ScribeMe to describe images and surroundings aloud. Sulaiman Adewale taught his phone to read account numbers across a shop. Elly Savatia works with deaf Kenyans on sign-language translation. Each took on a particular barrier in everyday life.
01 · New York, USA
John-Ross Rizzo: shopping and traveling on his own terms
Rizzo wanted to choose his own produce. He and his lab built tools for finding groceries, reading subway signs, and finding the way through buildings. They are still moving from lab prototypes toward wider use.
The legally blind scientist who built himself back into the produce aisleSource: CBS New York
02 · Cairo, Egypt
Mark Morad: describing the pictures a screen reader misses
After losing his sight, Morad taught himself to program through YouTube and a screen reader. He built ScribeMe to describe the pictures he could no longer see. His sister Karen later took it on a safari in Kenya.
The Cairo student who taught himself to code after losing his sight, then built the app that let his sister see her own safari03 · Osogbo, Nigeria
Sulaiman Adewale: reading the number across the shop
Adewale struggled to read account numbers posted on shop walls. He built a way to read them through a phone camera and make payments in WhatsApp. Early user Babatunde Hassan likes the convenience but worries about how his information is protected.
The engineer who could not read the account number on the wall, so he taught his phone to read it for himSource: TechCabal, Abubakar Abdulrasheed, July 2025, who tested the product independently for two weeks
04 · Kenya
Elly Savatia: working with deaf Kenyans on communication
Savatia works with deaf Kenyans on avatars that translate speech and text into Kenyan Sign Language. The tools still make errors. Savatia sees them filling gaps where interpreters are unavailable, with human interpreters still needed.
The Kenyan engineer who built Africa's first AI sign-language translator after watching 300 deaf students share one interpreterSource: Africanews
Start with the person using it
Morad started with a diagram. Adewale started with a number on a wall. A problem you've worked around for years can be a place to begin. Share a story with someone who knows that feeling, or nominate a person building a way past it.