Why I built AccessLearn

I volunteered as a tutor at Peer Herat, working across several subjects. Two of my students are visually impaired, and part of my role was recording their school textbooks aloud, they were required to use the same materials as sighted students, since no accessible alternative existed for them. I eventually had to leave both the organization and my country, though I stayed in touch with them. Months later, one of my students enrolled in an online English course on his own. He hit a wall during an exam: a reading section required someone to read it aloud, and there was no one available. When he raised it with his teacher, he was told nothing could be done. That's when I decided to build something for them myself, audio English lessons, made specifically for the way they learn.

I chose Family and Friends as the starting point — a 15-unit beginner textbook, and the same one my students were already required to study. For each unit, I worked through the material in Persian and English together: not just translating words, but explaining the grammar, the pronunciation, and the reasoning behind each rule. The setup was simple: a microphone for clearer sound, my phone to record, and my laptop and Google Drive to keep everything organized. Partway through, I built this website too, to document the project as it took shape. Lessons still reach my students the way they always have, over WhatsApp, this site isn't the delivery method, it's a record of the work. Explaining grammar out loud, with nothing written down, turned out to be harder than I expected. I solved that by writing every grammar point into a notebook by hand, and working out how to explain each one clearly before recording it. One thing I haven't solved: the textbook is built for children, and leans heavily on pictures to teach new words, something that doesn't translate to audio. If this continues, I'll likely move to a different book, or look into building something made specifically for blind students. I'm also still working out how my students could access lessons on their own, rather than through me directly. I don't know the technology for that yet, but it's something I'd like to learn.

What I actually want is bigger than this one project: an education system in my country that includes differently-abled students, instead of expecting them to fit into one that was never built for them.