This week, I attended two significant media events: the Africa Editors Congress, which brought together the continent's top editors, media executives, policymakers, and global partners; and the Africa Media Festival, where I spoke on a panel. At both events, the key themes were sustainability, trust, and the challenges facing journalism in Africa.

There will be plenty to share in upcoming editions, so stay tuned.

Today, I want you to meet a young innovator from Cameroon who's trying to make the internet fully accessible to deaf people.

Duclair Fopa is 23 years old. His ambition? To translate the entire internet into sign language - using AI.

Who: Duclair Fopa, 23-year-old Cameroonian founder

What: InReach - an AI-powered browser extension that translates digital content into sign language in real time across 200+ languages

The Problem: 70 million people globally are completely deaf. Captions lose context, tone, and emotional emphasis. Existing sign language services are expensive, require scheduling, and are platform-specific.

The Innovation: Install once, use everywhere. InReach sits in your browser and works across all platforms without requiring system redesigns—like "Grammarly for accessibility."

Why It Matters: Duclair challenges the assumption that captions equal accessibility. With 70 million users, this isn't a niche—it's infrastructure. The three young founders are self-funded, developing reverse functionality (sign language to text), and seeking partnerships to scale.

GO DEEP.👇🏾

Duclair Fopa has developed an AI-powered tool that turns digital content into real-time sign language across more than two hundred languages, without requiring platform redesigns.

The 23-year-old Cameroonian says his ambition is to make the entire internet instantly accessible to deaf users.

The Problem

According to the World Health Organization, around 1.5 billion people worldwide live with some degree of hearing loss. Of those, an estimated 70 million are completely deaf.

And even though the digital world is rapidly expanding, for many deaf users, access remains partial at best.

What about captions and subtitles, I ask?

"Captions are not accessibility," Duclair tells me. "A lot of context is lost when a deaf person follows content based only on subtitles."

That observation became the seed of InReach - a universal browser extension that converts digital content into sign language, without requiring platforms to redesign their systems.

Why Existing Solutions Fall Short

While Duclair admits that interpretation services are already available, he argues that they’re expensive and require scheduling, and that availability depends on whether an interpreter is free at that moment.

So what makes InReach different, given that there are already some AI-driven sign language companies? Duclair says that most of these are platform-specific. “In addition, they require integration agreements, technical adaptations, or custom deployments.” He adds.

“With InReach, you install once, and use it everywhere. He says it sits inside your browser and supports accessibility across different platforms. “We’re building something like Google Translate for sign languages — something that works across the web without changing the platform itself.”

From Hackathon to Architecture

Duclair tells me that the idea was born during the Cameroon International Tech Summit in 2024.

The competition theme was “education for people with disabilities.” So Duclair and his co-founders chose to focus on deaf students.”

“We asked ourselves - what happens when a deaf university student tries to follow a programming tutorial on YouTube? Or attend a live online lecture? Or participate in a Zoom seminar?”

“The truth is that even with captions, the nuance, tone, and emotional emphasis disappear, so while exclusion is subtle, it is very real.”

InReach’s current MVP or prototype instantly translates text into sign language. The architecture involves:

He says, “The goal is to offer support in multiple languages, as well as multi-sign support in English, French, German, and more languages.” The team is also developing a reverse functionality that can translate sign language back into text.

The Real Test: The Community

The product has been validated by 25+ deaf community educators and users, and there has been major interest from some local universities and government agencies. They are also planning a public exhibition in Cameroon’s economic capital, Douala, where the product will be demonstrated to broader audiences.

But scaling accessibility technology requires deeper and continuous engagement with the deaf community itself, who can validate nuance and cultural accuracy.

The Bigger Play

Because InReach aims to target both individual and business clients, they've developed a freemium model for individual users and are looking to partner with big tech companies that could help them scale accessibility exponentially.

"We are just three young co-founders, including two AI engineers, and we are currently self-funded," Duclair says.

InReach is currently hosted across multiple platforms, but expanding the infrastructure will require investment.

"What we need next is not just funding, but belief- from major tech platforms, accessibility advocates, and investors who are willing to see accessibility not as charity, but as market infrastructure."

He says the problem they're addressing - accessibility for 70 million completely deaf users- is not a niche, but a significant global audience.

Duclair and his colleagues believe accessibility for the deaf must evolve beyond subtitles, and that can only happen if inclusion is prioritised early, as they're trying to do.

African Philanthropy Media Fellowship.

The fellowship trains journalists, content creators, and media practitioners to produce accurate, compelling stories about African-led philanthropy.

Details here

Deadline:Apply by February 28

Annual Media Excellence Awards (AMEA) 2026.

The Media Council of Kenya invites entries for its annual award that celebrates journalistic excellence. On offer are 26 category accolades, whose winners vie for the coveted Journalist of the Year prize.

Apply now:

Deadline: Submit by February 28

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