A Dubai teenager has turned her younger brother's reluctance to read into a bilingual reading app. Gulf News profiles 17-year-old Maya Lofty, who created IKRAA to help children build reading habits through goals, credits and rewards. She built it using a no-code platform despite having little app-development experience. The website is available, while its App Store launch is still being worked on.

The details

A 17-year-old student in Dubai has developed a bilingual reading platform inspired by her younger brother's difficulty forming a regular reading habit.

Gulf News reported Maya Lofty's story on 4 November 2026.

Maya, a Grade 12 student at the American School of Dubai, noticed that her brother Rakan preferred spending time on his tablet rather than reading books.

Instead of continuing to remind him to read, she decided to develop a system that could make reading feel more rewarding.

The result is IKRAA, a platform supporting Arabic and English.

Parents can set reading targets, while children record their progress and earn credits for meeting agreed goals.

Those credits can be exchanged for rewards established by parents or teachers.

The approach aims to make progress visible and help children gradually develop a more positive relationship with reading.

Maya used Glide, a no-code development platform, to build the application.

She had limited experience creating apps before starting the project and learned many of the required skills during development.

Her involvement with the literacy organisation Room to Read also influenced her interest in childhood reading.

According to Gulf News, the platform can be explored through its website, ikraa.ae.

Its release through Apple's App Store remains a work in progress.

Maya hopes the project will eventually reach more families and schools, but wider adoption has not yet been established.