ReLuminate builds AI-powered, sound-first games so that visually impaired young people can play, connect, and belong — no sight required.
This site is set in Atkinson Hyperlegible — a typeface designed for low-vision readers.
Our mission
Gaming is where young people today make friends, build confidence, and unwind. But most games assume perfect vision — locking millions of visually impaired youth out of the spaces where their peers gather.
ReLuminate flips that assumption. We design games around sound, story, and AI — creating safe digital spaces where differently abled youth build wellness, community, and belonging.
“Technology and inclusion are inseparable from sustainable development.”
SDG 9
Inclusive innovation & accessible digital infrastructure
SDG 11
Inclusive, safe communities — physical and digital
What we do
Every game is built to be played by ear. Spatial audio, voice, and rich soundscapes carry the story and the gameplay — the screen is optional.
AI personalizes each story to the player's experiences and preferences, and adapts controls and difficulty in real time — voice commands, custom inputs, safer play.
Multiplayer spaces connect differently abled youth with peers worldwide — building resilience, easing stress, and turning play into belonging.
The journey
2024
The idea takes shape: sound-first, AI-powered games designed for visually impaired youth, backed by global youth leadership communities.
2025
Game prototyping, the first logo and project video, and presentations to global youth networks including LearningPlanet.
2025
A visit to the Enabling Village in Singapore to deepen understanding of assistive technologies and the everyday challenges visually impaired people face.
May 2026
ReLuminate joins the Forum’s session on shaping the future of science, technology and innovation for sustainable development.
July 2026
Presenting inclusive gaming at the High-Level Political Forum, under the theme of transformative, equitable and innovative action for the 2030 Agenda.
United Nations · New York
On Friday 10 July 2026, ReLuminate spent a day at UN Headquarters for the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development — the UN's central platform for reviewing the 2030 Agenda. The 2026 session ran 7–16 July under the theme of transformative, equitable, innovative and coordinated actions for the Sustainable Development Goals, with in-depth reviews of SDGs 6, 7, 9, 11 and 17.
10 July · Morning · Official session
A forum-wide discussion on how governments work with civil society, youth, business and academia to deliver the Goals — the partnership question at the heart of SDG 17, one of the five Goals reviewed in depth this year. Sixteen Major Groups and Other Stakeholders, among them the constituency for persons with disabilities, fed position papers into the 2026 theme.
10 July · 13:15 · Side event
Convened in Conference Room 5 by the UN Friends of Vision — chaired by Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh and Ireland — with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. More than 2.2 billion people live with vision impairment, at least half of it preventable or treatable, yet eye health is rarely written into national development plans. The event launched the St. John's Global Compact for Eye Health and previewed the first Global Summit for Eye Health, in Antigua and Barbuda this November.
10 July · Country panels
The part of the Forum where countries report, in their own words, on progress toward the Goals — and where inclusion either appears in the national story or does not. Thirty-six countries presented in 2026. The reviews opened on 10 July with Jamaica, Burkina Faso and Guinea, followed by Estonia, Liberia and the Marshall Islands, then Burundi and Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau and Togo.
The eye health session made an argument ReLuminate keeps running into: sight loss is not a health footnote, it cuts across education, employment, safety and daily independence, and it is only solved when sectors stop working separately. The stakeholder session made the same point about who gets to be in the room.
One thing was almost entirely absent from the agenda: play. Access to school, to work, to treatment — all rightly discussed. Access to the games your friends are playing is still treated as optional. That gap is the reason ReLuminate exists, and it is the thing we carried back from New York.
Founder
Yian is a 16-year-old developer and advocate for differently abled youth from the Singapore American School. A coder in web development, Python, and C. He delivers products like websites and hardwares — and believes the ones that matter most are the ones everyone can play.
Through ReLuminate, he merges AI and assistive technology to open gaming to visually impaired young people, and carries that message from his school community to the United Nations.
© 2026 ReLuminate · A youth-led project for inclusive gaming