Amina Ben Salah

Tunisian tech innovator creating accessible education tools for visually impaired children

Amina Ben Salah is a Tunisian computer scientist who revolutionized education for visually impaired children through her pioneering technology solutions. Born in 1982 in Sfax, she developed the first Arabic Braille-to-speech converter during her graduate studies at École Polytechnique. In 2003, she founded Tactile Learning Solutions, a nonprofit that created award-winning assistive technologies including the Alif tablet - a low-cost device with tactile interfaces and multilingual accessibility features.

Her most impactful invention is the Braille Bridge system, which connects visually impaired students in 12 Arab countries through a cloud-based learning platform. This system has enabled 15,000 children to access STEM education materials in Arabic Braille. Amina also developed the Sabah app, which converts textbooks into accessible formats using AI-powered optical character recognition tailored for right-to-left languages.

Her work has been integrated into Tunisia's national curriculum and inspired similar programs in Morocco and Algeria. Amina's TEDx talk 'Breaking Barriers with Braille Technology' has been translated into 18 languages. She received the UNESCO King Hamad Prize for Digital Education in 2018 and was named one of Africa's 100 Most Influential Women by Forbes. Currently, she leads the Pan-Arab Assistive Tech Initiative, expanding access to 200,000 visually impaired students across the continent. Amina Ben Salah's innovations have transformed educational opportunities for marginalized learners while preserving Arabic cultural heritage in digital formats.