Our Story
Accesstech Innovation and Research Centre is a private company limited by guarantee, registered in Nigeria with company registration no. 7260611, and a mandate to conduct business as a supplier of assistive technology (AT) products and services. The company was co-founded by Opeolu Stephen Akinola, a visually impaired AT consultant, and Emmanuella Akinola, a business development professional. Over the years, they tried various business and nonprofit models for achieving their goal to empower blind persons for full socio-economic participation, winning the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Fund and the Nexford University Business case Competition along the way. Opeolu and Emmanuella Akinola eventually co-founded Accesstech Innovation and Research Centre in 2023 as a nonprofit Limited by Guarantee with the company’s office at 18 Modupe Johnson Crescent, Surulere, Lagos State. Since we opened our doors in August 2023, we have supplied Assistive Technologies worth more than $26,000 and trained more than 200 blind persons in digital skills on smartphones and computers from foundation to advanced levels. As a young university graduate with enviable academic records, Opeolu Stephen Akinola experienced the pain of disability-related rejection and discrimination when trying unsuccessfully to get a job. All the turndowns were based on tasks that required sight to perform. So, when he discovered the power of Assistive Technologies with which blind people can accomplish such tasks independently, such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for reading print and screen readers with text-to-speech (TTS), Opeolu committed his life to ensuring that blind and partially sighted persons everywhere get the technology and skills for maximizing their opportunities and fulfilling their aspirations. He became the first computer instructor of blind persons in Nigeria, working at the Nigerwives Braille Book Production Centre in Lagos from 1999 to 2007. Emmanuella and Opeolu met at a meeting about the implementation of the Lagos State inclusive education programme in the office of the then Commissioner of Education, Dr Leke Pitan. She was a journalist writing personality stories for a magazine about people who overcame the limitations of disability to be successful. They became friends and later married in 2008, having jointly registered an Assistive Technology retailing business some months before. In order to provide the absolute best, the partners each embarked on intensive self-development. Emmanuella’s dissertation for a post-graduate diploma in Education was on Inclusive Education. At the same time, she was a member of the Lagos Civil Society Disability Policy Partnership, a UK-government-sponsored programme that successfully pushed for the enactment of the Lagos State Special People’s Law in 2011 and produced the first disability reporting manual for journalists in Nigeria. Her later entrepreneurship studies up to an MBA and leadership trainings in the US all centred on the inclusion of persons with disabilities. Opeolu, on the other hand, attended a course in Organizational Management for the Nonprofit Sector, after which he served in executive and technical capacities for various local and international organizations in the blindness sector. He later obtained an M.A. in Disabilities from the UK and became a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC). This has helped our clients to access tertiary education, reposition their businesses, get jobs, and perform better in employment. In addition to on-site training at our premises, we are successfully reaching visually impaired persons in other locations in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, and Zimbabwe with in-demand digital literacy. All our projects cater to intersectionality like gender and age because we believe in equity, diversity, and inclusion, that people of different abilities and other social identities deserve to be valued and respected.
Our Vision
A world in which people living with sight loss and their families participate fully in all activities without discrimination, leveraging on assistive technology.
Our Mission
To empower individuals with vision loss by creating and delivering innovative, accessible, and affordable assistive products and services that enhance independence, quality of life, and full participation in society.
Cognate Experience of Founders
Opeolu Stephen Akinola
Executive Director
Opeolu Akinola is a graduate of the Senior Management Institute of the International Development Programme (2012) and holds an M.A. in Disability Studies from the University of Leeds. He is a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals and a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC). He is a former member of the World Blind Union (WBU) Technology committee, former Nigeria Country Representative of the International Council for the Education of Visually Impaired Persons (ICEVI), and chairman of the Nigeria Association of the Blind (NAB) Lagos chapter.
Emmanuella Mercy Akinola
Business Development Professional
Emmanuella Mercy Akinola holds an MBA from Nexford University USA and is a graduate of Journalism from the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ). She has completed the WomenX Programme of the Lagos Business School and the Joseph Business School. Emmanuella is also an alumnus of two US Government-sponsored programmes, the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP) specializing in human-centred design, and the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) on the Entrepreneurship track.
Our Team
Ibrahim Adeyemi Olalekan
Training and Sales Specialist
