---
title: "The magistrate who cannot see the witness: a blind judge tests Gambia’s courts"
description: "Muhammed Krubally has presided over a thousand cases in Banjul with a screen reader and a clerk, in a legal system built for the sighted"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-26T05:18:00Z
modified: 2026-10-26T11:23:39Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/the-magistrate-who-cannot-see-the-witness-a-blind-judge-test-45a020
language: en
tags: ["disability", "justice", "ai", "education", "world"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# The magistrate who cannot see the witness: a blind judge tests Gambia’s courts

*Muhammed Krubally has presided over a thousand cases in Banjul with a screen reader and a clerk, in a legal system built for the sighted*

By Jan Sokol · October 26, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/the-magistrate-who-cannot-see-the-witness-a-blind-judge-test-45a020

## In brief

- Muhammed Krubally, 41, is the Gambia’s first visually impaired magistrate, appointed in 2016
- He has presided over more than 1,000 civil and criminal cases at the Banjul Magistrates’ Court
- Krubally uses JAWS screen-reading software to read documents and judgments and follow proceedings
- He is secretary-general of the Gambia Organisation of the Visually Impaired, which lobbies for assistive resources

It is still early when Magistrate Muhammed Krubally arrives at the Banjul Magistrates’ Court. The capital of the Gambia is beginning its day around him; inside, before the first case, his clerk goes over the day’s proceedings, running through the files, making sure everything is in place. Krubally listens, asks questions, and prepares to preside, [Kaddy Jawo reported for Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/26/the-gambias-first-blind-magistrate-tests-a-system-built-for-the-sighted).

He cannot see the files. He is 41, and since 2016 — when he became the Gambia’s first visually impaired magistrate — he has presided over more than 1,000 civil and criminal cases in a legal system designed, in every detail that matters, for men who can read their own documents.

His instrument is a voice. Krubally works with JAWS — Job Access With Speech — a screen-reading software that lets him navigate his computer and read documents and judgments, including, as his office puts it, with the help of artificial intelligence that has become part of how he follows the court’s work. The law speaks to him, literally, through a machine, and he judges by ear what other magistrates judge by eye.

## Justice, and the shape of the bench

The courtroom, the oldest theatre of the state, is full of silent signals the bench is supposed to catch: the witness who looks away, the lawyer’s raised page, the policeman’s nod. Krubally’s decade on the bench is a standing question to that theatre — whether the form truly holds the substance, or merely hides its absence in those who cannot perform it.

Outside the courtroom, he pushes the same question onto the republic. Krubally serves as secretary-general of the Gambia Organisation of the Visually Impaired, which has kept lobbying — alongside the country’s National Youth Parliament — for the unglamorous fundamentals: learning materials, assistive technologies for visually impaired children. Their argument is that legislation alone does not make disabled citizens full participants in the country’s economic life; a law is a beginning, not a ramp.

In Banjul, the files keep coming, the clerk keeps reading out the day’s list, and a blind man passes judgment in a court built for the sighted. The system works — for now, one case at a time, because one man insists on it. What would be said of the system, one may ask, if it were the other way round: a thousand blind magistrates, and one man who can see?