Kenya’s new disability law promises dignity, accessibility and equal healthcare. Its real test is whether women with disabilities can enter a clinic, communicate privately and make decisions about their own bodies.

A woman using a wheelchair receives assistance inside a medical facility. For many women with disabilities, reproductive healthcare remains limited by inaccessible infrastructure, communication barriers and discriminatory assumptions.

A reproductive-health appointment quietly assumes many things about the patient.

It assumes she can enter the building without assistance, climb onto an examination table, hear the clinician’s questions, read a consent form and communicate without a relative speaking on her behalf. It assumes she can travel to the facility, afford the journey and discuss contraception, pregnancy, infertility, HIV testing or sexual violence in complete privacy.

For many Kenyan women with disabilities, each of these assumptions can become a barrier.

A clinic may have contraceptives but no wheelchair-accessible examination room. A hospital may employ qualified doctors but lack a Kenyan Sign Language interpreter. Health information may be technically available, yet inaccessible to a blind patient or a woman with an intellectual disability. In other cases, the greatest obstacle is not the building but the belief that women with disabilities are not sexually active, should not become pregnant or cannot raise children.

Kenya now has an opportunity to confront these failures.

The Persons with Disabilities Act, signed into law in May 2025, significantly strengthened the country’s legal framework for disability inclusion. It recognises accessibility as a prerequisite for participation in society and places new responsibilities on government institutions and service providers. Among its healthcare provisions is a requirement for national and referral health institutions to employ Kenyan Sign Language interpreters.

The law is an important victory. But a right written into legislation is not yet a service delivered inside a hospital.

The Clinic as an Obstacle Course

Research across African countries has repeatedly identified the barriers women with disabilities encounter when seeking sexual and reproductive healthcare. These include inaccessible buildings, unsuitable examination equipment, expensive transport, limited accessible information, discriminatory treatment and insufficiently trained medical workers.

These barriers frequently reinforce one another.

A woman who uses a wheelchair may reach a facility only to discover steps at the entrance. Even with a ramp in place, the examination table may be too high for her to use safely. A Deaf patient may be forced to bring a relative to interpret an intensely private conversation. A visually impaired woman may receive a printed prescription or consent form with no accessible alternative.

A person with an intellectual disability may encounter an even more fundamental denial: healthcare workers may direct every question to her caregiver rather than to her.

These experiences are not simply examples of poor customer service. They determine whether patients receive contraception, antenatal care, cervical cancer screening, HIV services, infertility treatment, postnatal support and medical assistance after sexual violence.

They also determine who is permitted to exercise reproductive autonomy.

Women with disabilities are often trapped between two damaging assumptions. The first is that they are asexual and therefore do not require sexual-health information. The second is that if they become pregnant, their pregnancy is automatically irresponsible, dangerous or evidence of abuse.

Both assumptions remove the woman from the centre of decisions concerning her own body.

Privacy cannot depend on a Relative

Communication access is one of the most urgent gaps.

For a Deaf woman, the presence of a professional interpreter can determine whether she understands a diagnosis, medication, medical risk or consent procedure. However, interpretation must also be confidential.

When hospitals do not provide professional interpreters, patients may be required to rely on parents, siblings, partners or community members. This arrangement is especially dangerous when the appointment concerns intimate-partner violence, contraception, sexually transmitted infections or a pregnancy the patient has not disclosed to her family.

The patient may withhold information because she fears judgment. The relative may summarise rather than interpret accurately. In the worst cases, the person accompanying her may be the source of coercion or abuse.

Healthcare accessibility must therefore mean more than having someone in the room who understands sign language. It requires qualified interpreters, confidentiality standards and a system that allows patients to request communication support without surrendering their privacy.

The same principle applies to other forms of disability. Accessible reproductive healthcare should include Braille, audio information, captioned videos, plain-language materials, visual communication tools and staff trained in supported decision-making.

Support should help the patient make her own decision. It should not be transferred to somebody else.

Kenya has begun building solutions

There are signs that institutions are beginning to recognise the scale of the challenge.

In 2025, the National Council for Persons with Disabilities entered into a partnership with MSI Reproductive Choices Kenya aimed at making sexual and reproductive health services more inclusive. The collaboration proposed staff training, professional sign language interpretation, accessible venues, captioned videos, and communication materials designed for different disability needs.

Community-based programmes have also worked with young women with disabilities in Nairobi’s Kibera and Mukuru informal settlements. These initiatives have created spaces where participants can discuss reproductive health, challenge stigma and learn how to advocate for services.

Such projects demonstrate that exclusion is not inevitable. Solutions already exist.

The challenge is moving them from limited programmes into the national health system.

A woman should not receive accessible care only because she happens to live near a donor-supported project. Nor should accessibility depend on an individual doctor’s goodwill. It should be built into public health financing, procurement, professional training, and accountability systems.

From Compliance to Transformation

Kenya’s counties can begin by conducting accessibility audits of public-health facilities. These assessments should examine more than entrances and ramps. They should evaluate toilets, maternity wards, examination equipment, signage, communication services, emergency procedures and digital booking platforms.

Healthcare training institutions should integrate disability-inclusive reproductive care into their curricula. Clinicians need practical guidance on communication, informed consent and respectful maternity care for patients with different disabilities.

Hospitals should also collect disability-disaggregated data. Without knowing who is being excluded, policymakers cannot determine whether investments are improving access.

Most importantly, women with disabilities must participate in designing the services intended for them. Consultation should not occur after policies have already been written. Organisations led by persons with disabilities should help determine priorities, monitor facilities and evaluate whether services are genuinely accessible.

Implementation will require money.

Interpreters must be recruited and paid. Adjustable examination tables and accessible diagnostic equipment must be purchased. Facilities must be renovated. Information must be produced in several formats. Health workers must receive continuing professional training.

The 2026/27 budget process, therefore, represents more than an accounting exercise. It is a test of whether Kenya intends to finance the rights it has recognised.

A Continental Opportunity

Kenya’s success or failure will carry significance beyond its borders.

African countries are confronting similar questions about disability, healthcare and reproductive autonomy. Many have adopted constitutional protections or international commitments while struggling to translate them into everyday services.

Kenya could demonstrate what implementation looks like within a devolved health system: nationally protected rights, county-level funding, accessible facilities, trained professionals and direct participation by organisations of persons with disabilities.

That would make disability inclusion not a charitable addition to healthcare, but a measure of healthcare quality itself.

A reproductive-health system cannot claim to be universal while examination rooms remain physically inaccessible. It cannot claim to protect confidentiality while patients must bring relatives to interpret. It cannot claim to respect consent while caregivers and clinicians make decisions without speaking directly to the patient.

The promise of Kenya’s new disability law is not merely that women with disabilities will be allowed through the clinic door.

It is that once inside, they will be heard, respected and trusted to make decisions about their own lives.

That is the difference between access on paper and justice in practice.