Convo South Africa Pauses Operations – Exposing the Cracks in South Africa’s Disability Rights Framework

Johannesburg – Convo South Africa, the Deaf-owned and Deaf-led provider of Video Relay Services (VRS), has announced a pause in its day-to-day operations effective 28 February 2026. The decision, driven by operational sustainability challenges, lays bare a painful truth: South Africa’s disability rights architecture, while impressive on paper, continues to fail the very people it was written to protect.

Since launching locally in 2022, Convo has facilitated over 22,000 conversations for Deaf South Africans – from emergency ambulance calls to job interviews, banking queries to school enrolments. For thousands of users, it was not a luxury. It was a lifeline.

Now that lifeline has gone quiet.

The Funding Gap That Broke the Model

The root cause is not a lack of demand – it is a lack of sustainable funding. In countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States, government-backed mechanisms ensure Deaf citizens can access relay services as a matter of right. The UK’s Access to Work scheme, for instance, provides grants directly to persons with disabilities, putting the power of choice in their hands.

South Africa has no equivalent. Here, accessibility remains trapped in a grey zone where corporates often view it as charity rather than compliance, and the state has yet to enforce a centralised funding model. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) mandates accessibility in the telecommunications sector, but without clear regulatory enforcement on who pays, the burden falls on service providers – or worse, on Deaf users themselves.

Chelsea Williamson, General Manager of Convo South Africa, puts it bluntly: “We operate in a system where the right to access is written into law, but nobody has been told to pick up the bill. Without a centralised funding mechanism, accessibility services cannot sustain themselves. The market alone will never deliver on the promise of inclusion.”

A Voice from the Disability Rights Sector

Therina Wentzel, National Director of the National Council of and for Persons with Disabilities (NCPD), weighed in on the significance of Convo’s departure.

“Services like Convo are not nice-to-haves. They are the bridge between exclusion and participation. When a Deaf person can independently phone a doctor, apply for a job, or report an emergency, that is not a product feature – that is a human right in action. The fact that we are losing this service should alarm every policymaker, every CEO, and every citizen who believes in the promise of our Constitution. We must ask ourselves: if our laws guarantee equality, why are we still allowing the market to decide who gets access and who doesn’t?”

“The NCPD has long advocated for a shift from policy to practice. South Africa ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We have the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We have the Constitution. What we do not have is accountability. When a service like Convo collapses because no one will fund it, that is not a market failure – it is a moral one. Government departments, regulators, and the private sector must stop passing the responsibility around and commit to a sustainable, enforceable model that centres the dignity of persons with disabilities.”

A Call to Corporate South Africa

This moment demands more than sympathy. It demands action. Corporate South Africa has the resources, the platforms, and the legal obligation to invest in meaningful disability inclusion – not as a tick-box exercise, but as a core business and human rights commitment. Accessibility is not a CSI line item. It is a compliance requirement rooted in the Constitution, the Employment Equity Act, and the Code for Persons with Disabilities.

The current “user pays” model amounts to a disability tax. Expecting Deaf South Africans – many of whom face disproportionately high unemployment – to cover data costs and service subscriptions out of pocket is economically discriminatory. Convo has proposed a workable alternative: a nominal levy of as little as R0.20 per mobile subscriber, pooled through the Universal Service and Access Fund, to finance a single, high-quality, 24/7 National Relay Service available to every Deaf person regardless of their mobile network. The model exists. The technology exists. What is missing is the political and corporate will to make it happen.

Convo’s leadership has indicated it continues to seek long-term partnerships and sustainable funding solutions to resume services in the future. But the window is closing. Every day without a functioning Video Relay Service is another day a Deaf South African cannot independently make a phone call.

The disability rights community is calling on the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, ICASA, and the private sector to urgently review the funding model for relay services – and to align South Africa with the international standard that access is a right, not a privilege.