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Special features see visually-impaired with phones hit 80pc
Kenyans with disability in their communication recorded the fastest growth in phone use over the five years to 2024, from 17.8 percent of their population in 2019, to 51.4 percent.
At least 8 in 10 Kenyans with visual impairment are now using phones, amid growing access to smartphones with supportive features.
Visually impaired Kenyans recorded one of the fastest growths in phone use among people with disabilities, with 80.8 percent among them using the gadgets last year, up from 63.9 percent in 2019, a new Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) report shows.
The survey shows that phone usage among visually-impaired Kenyans leads across all forms of disabilities, followed by Kenyans with movement disabilities, where 77.3 percent of them used phones.
The growth in use of smartphones among persons with different forms of visual impairment comes at a time when phone companies have been developing gadgets with assistive technologies such as screen readers that enable them to perform tasks they were previously unable to.
Visually-impaired women continue to use phones more than their male counterparts, with 83.8 percent among them using phones last year, while for males the figure stood at 76.5 percent.
Among the mobility-disabled Kenyans, phone use increased from 60.1 percent to 77.3 percent of the population over the five years to 2024.
“Similar trends were observed in other disability types ... hearing impairments [grew] from 40.3 percent to 51.7 percent, and cognitive disabilities from 37.8 percent to 59.4 percent, over the two periods, respectively,” the report stated.
Kenyans with disability in their communication, however, recorded the fastest growth in phone use over the five years to 2024, from 17.8 percent of their population in 2019, to 51.4 percent.
Persons with self-care disability remain the segment with the lowest levels of phone usage, with just 44 percent of their population using the gadgets, though this is an increase from 25.4 percent by 2019.
It is also in this category that there are more males using phones compared to females, the KNBS survey shows.
