(Photo by iStock/Sunshine Seeds)
More than one million people live with hearing loss in Uganda. They are among the 136 million people in Africa living with some degree of hearing loss, according to the 2021 World Report on Hearing from the World Health Organization (WHO). This number is projected to more than double by 2050.
Despite this growing demographic, awareness of hearing loss on the continent is low. Many African communities have few to no sign-language interpreters, which impedes deaf people’s ability to access public and medical resources. Taking action to better serve Uganda’s deaf community, the Parliament of Uganda passed the Persons with Disabilities Act in 2019, which requires all newscasts on public and private television stations to have a sign-language interpreter.
Implementation of this legislation, however, has been slow due to bureaucracy and cost. Deciding to work around government inaction, Susan Mujjawa, a sign-language interpreter, and Simon Eroku, an innovator who is deaf, launched Signs TV Uganda in April 2022. Broadcasting on YouTube, Signs TV is the country’s first channel dedicated to providing media content specifically designed for people with hearing impairment in Ugandan Sign Language. The channel joins sign-language broadcasters TV Surdo in Mozambique and el Canal Hipoacúsico Educativo in Argentina in using deaf anchors to read news that is simultaneously signed by an interpreter.
Mujjawa and Eroku had the idea for the channel in late 2021. At the time, Mujjawa was working as a sign-language interpreter with television station NTV Uganda, where only one hour of daily programming was produced for people with hearing impairment.
“A one-hour program for deaf people isn’t enough because people like to know what happens as soon as the news breaks,” Mujjawa says, pointing out that breaking news often relays critically important health and safety information. Furthermore, not all people who are deaf can turn to online media sources, since not everyone knows how to read. Only when information is converted into sign language does it appear, she says, in “the most accessible format.”
Remera Nainerugaba, a 35-year-old Ugandan who began watching Signs TV during the month of its launch, appreciates its easy-to-follow format. “Before Signs,” he says, “I didn’t know what was happening in my immediate environment.” He noted that he was especially frustrated during the COVID-19 lockdown period, because “the deaf community was excluded from the communication chain.” Instead, he had to wait for newspapers to print the latest information about the pandemic—a lack of immediacy that could’ve proven deadly during its early months.
Before commencing programming, Mujjawa and Eroku conducted market research to determine their audience’s preferences. Their findings revealed that the deaf community prefers content to be broadcast by deaf people rather than sign-language interpreters and that the deaf community spends more time online on Saturdays than other days. Mujjawa and Eroku then tailored their programming to these preferences.
In addition to the cofounders, the Signs TV team currently consists of four volunteer news anchors, who have hearing impairments, and two sign-language interpreters. Their goal is to raise enough capital in the near future to hire all the volunteers as full-time employees.
The cofounders knew that funding a project that serves a marginalized community would be a challenge. But a $20,000 grant from the Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communication’s Media Futures project, in November 2021, supported their market research, production equipment for their small studio, and their channel launch on YouTube.
In 2023, Signs TV Uganda’s top priority is its YouTube pilot project. Through this small-scale implementation, they hope to test the expansion of their programming to seven days a week, to assess feasibility in terms of cost, and to measure the audience’s preferences regarding programming duration and type. Signs TV seeks to raise $360,000 to finance a professional studio and broadcast equipment primarily from individual donors and partnerships. Through an agreement with the Uganda Communications Commission, Signs TV has the necessary license to launch as an independent television station.
Mujjawa and Eroku are also developing partnerships with regional cable TV providers in order to broadcast across the East African region by 2025. The ultimate goal, Mujjawa says, is for Signs TV to be established across Africa and reach a broader audience outside the continent by 2027.
Read more stories by Valentine Benjamin.