7 Nigerian tech professionals with disabilities and what they’re building

Technology is often described as the great equaliser, a field where what you can build matters more than how you look, walk, hear or see. But for many Nigerian tech professionals with disabilities, the reality is far more complicated.  The work itself can be open to them, because code does not care who wrote it. Almost everything around the work, from the tools and the hiring process to the lessons and the office, was designed with someone else in mind.

A poorly designed website can prevent a screen reader from interpreting its content. An inaccessible coding tool can make even simple programming tasks difficult for someone who cannot see its interface. A video lesson without captions or sign language interpretation can exclude people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Disability, in tech, is rarely a limit on ability. More often it is a limit on access, and access is something other people decide.

The challenges are rarely dramatic because they are quiet and repeated: an application that goes unanswered, an interview that ends early, a device that costs more than a month’s pay, a well-meaning offer of charity when the person asks for a job.  Ask people living with disabilities in tech what they want to hear, and the answer is often simple. They are not after applause, but a fair chance. Many say they are tired of being described as inspiring for doing ordinary work, and of being asked to prove what colleagues are assumed to have. 

They also pass on what they learned to the next person, because they know how much the first step costs. Their work shows that inclusion is a design choice, and that an industry built to solve problems has not yet solved this one. Here are seven Nigerians with disabilities, what they do and what the journey taught them.

1. Opeolu Akinola – Co-founder, AccessTech Innovation and Research Centre

Opeolu Akinola was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disorder, at three and lost his sight completely within a few years. He then spent about three decades teaching himself computing. In 1994, he ran into a barrier that many blind professionals still know. Confidentiality rules stopped him from using an assistant, and he had no assistive technology to replace one.

Over the years, he taught himself computing, first volunteering at a nonprofit in 1995. In 1999, he joined the Nigerwives Braille Book Production Centre as its first computer instructor, where he built a curriculum described as the first of its kind in West Africa and trained an estimated 20 to 30 people. Afterwards, he co-founded AccessTech Innovation and Research Centre in Lagos. The centre teaches keyboard skills, office software, text-to-speech, speech-to-text and AI tools to people with disabilities, mainly the visually impaired. It runs on a dual model: corporate clients pay for training, and people who cannot afford it are taught for free.

In 2022, the team behind AccessTech won $1,500 in seed funding in Nexford University’s first Business Case competition. In January 2023, AccessTech received a Microsoft AI for Accessibility grant to train 200 people between May 2023 and May 2024, and 238 completed it. Nearly 5,000 students across Africa have reportedly passed through his classes. 

2. Victor Ekwueme – Odoo specialist and data scientist at Chams.

At about seven years old, Victor Ekwueme began to notice that evenings were harder to see through than daytime. He did not know it then, but it was the first sign of retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that would later take most of his sight. Decades on, he is a data scientist and one of many Nigerian tech professionals with disabilities who are building careers, businesses and training centres in an industry that was rarely designed with them in mind.

Today, Victor works as an Odoo specialist and data scientist at Chams, and he tutors young blind people in data analytics. His recovery began when he decided to rely on tools and people. He used a screen reader, wrote a program to pull data from web pages his screen reader could not handle, and took the MIT Python course on edX. 

In 2011, before his sight declined further, he won the Apps4Africa hackathon with a hospital management app. He found that listing his disability on his CV meant few interviews, and that removing it led to interviews but no offers. Apart from working at Chams, he tutors in AccessTech’s data analytics pilot for young visually impaired people. 

3. Toyosi Badejo-Okusanya – Founder of Adaptive Atelier

Toyosi Badejo-Okusanya was diagnosed with hearing loss at four. She grew up in Lagos, seeing very few young disabled people building careers, creating technology or shaping industries.

Her career began in global marketing, accessibility consulting and brand strategy, where she worked on accessible digital campaigns, inclusive content strategy and visual merchandising. The turning point was her decision to move from storytelling and advocacy into building a business that tackles accessibility at scale. She noticed that many websites and platforms in Africa and beyond are not built for disabled people, cutting them off from jobs, education, banking, shopping and essential information.

Her company, Adaptive Atelier, is built around three products, including Adaptive API, which pairs AI with insights from disabled experts to help companies find and fix accessibility problems while creating paid work for disabled professionals, AdaptiveWiz, which lets businesses audit their websites and Adaptive Test, where disabled people are paid as consultants to test websites. 

4. Divinegift Usman – Founder of Zions Assistive Tech Solutions

Divinegift Usman woke one night at nine with his sight gone, but he had never had an eye condition. He studied computer science at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, as the only visually impaired student in his set, relying on classmates to record handouts and read exam questions. 

He says he had never typed on a computer before he trained under Akinola in Lagos, where he learned screen readers and typing. That training led to Zions Assistive Tech Solutions, Kaduna in 2021, which teaches visually impaired people to use Android phones, computers, screen readers, email and the internet.

In December 2020, he founded the Divine Life and Light Foundation in Kaduna, where he built relationships with NGOs, government institutions, schools and disability groups. He once trained a client in Abuja, about 200 km away. His biggest obstacle is cost, because the gadgets his clients need are expensive. He keeps going because, in his words, if he benefited this much, others should benefit too.

His skills now reach beyond Nigeria. In late 2025, he worked remotely as a community-building consultant for a UK-based company, and he beat a two-month target of 40 members by more than 100%.

5. Afolabi Oyebiyi – Backend software engineer at Cyclone Technology

Afolabi’s eyesight began failing in 2005 and worsened over the next few years. In 2013, he attended a rehabilitation centre where he learned screen readers, Braille and typing.  He found Braille hard and resisted it at first. Around 2014 and 2015, he taught himself to code with Codecademy, Coursera and W3Schools. 

Many editors were inaccessible, so he wrote much of his early code in Notepad. He later completed a two-and-a-half-year software engineering diploma at NIIT in Lagos, where he was the first visually impaired student. He has worked as a backend engineer at Cyclone Technology Limited, a Nigerian software consulting firm, since 2022.

He uses NVDA on his computer, TalkBack on his phone, and DeepSeek to learn concepts faster. He is also building a trivia app, and he argues that accessibility should be built in from the start, not added later.

6. Albert Amos Audu – Data analyst at Connected Development.

After college, Albert was not sure what to do next. He saw a Facebook ad inviting deaf applicants to a tech programme and applied. At Deaf-in-Tech, he studied data analytics, coding and visualisation tools such as Power BI, and learned to build a portfolio and network online. Job hunting in Nigeria is already hard, and he faced steeper odds as a deaf person.

He now works as a data analyst at Connected Development, a civil society organisation focused on transparency and good governance. He calls joining the programme a life-changing decision.

7. Victor Oricha- Facilitator, Deaf-in-Tech

Victor teaches coding in sign language in Abuja, where he often starts with the basics, such as switching on a computer and using a keyboard, and relies on live demonstrations and repetition. The programme he works for began in 2022 under Dr Arowolo Ayoola, who was moved by a deaf university roommate whom employers judged by offers of charity instead of by his qualifications. 

Deaf-in-Tech has since trained over 1,000 people, supported 10 deaf founders and placed at least 32 graduates in technical roles. Victor says the main barrier for deaf students is communication. Once it is removed, he says, they can learn just as quickly as anyone else.

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