抄録
In Japan, there has recently been an increasing interest in health, home care and welfare, as we enter into a society occupied by more and more elderly people and a smaller number of younger citizens. The Japanese government and the administrative divisions of Japan, including Tokyo, Hokkaido, Osaka, Kyoto and all the prefectures, have been adopting many kinds of health and welfare policies. As one such policy, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare designated an instrument for blind people and elderly people as a "daily life tool" in April 2003. This instrument translates information printed on paper to voice reading. The Ministry's policy and the associated budget will enable blind people to purchase the instrument with very little cost. Our company developed this instrument, called "SPEECHIO," as well as the new software that converts text to two-dimensional symbol named "SP-CODE." The SPEECHIO reads SP-CODE and changes text into voice reading automatically. We believe this new barrier-free communication system will greatly help blind people and old-aged people who have difficulties in reading small prints. In this article, I describe this system and our ongoing and future activities with the system.
