People have been paying much attention to ideal visions for promoting barrier tourism in the current situation in which it is pointed out that more and more welfare states are facing the danger of system collapse. With a focus on revitalizing regional economies on the basis of the promotion of regional tourism in recent years, this study seeks to examine barrier-free tourism centered on community based tourism. The paper also presents a new direction for the future of tourism by examining the European concept of social inclusion and the practice of social firms. In the analysis, the study considers both market mechanisms and societal and economic perspectives. The formation of social capital and other related materials and the accumulation of regional endogenous potential based on the logic of regional relativity are essential to reinvigorating local communities and economies as well as boosting barrier-free tourism.

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Accessibility in daily life for wheelchair users or persons with severe physical disabilities have greatly progressed after enactment of the new Accessibility Law in 2006. However, there are some differences in accessibility between daily life and working life. It is not rare for them to lose jobs or to lose continuous employment because of commuting difficulties by public transport. In this research I tried to grasp the present conditions about commuting and employment for them from questionnaires and interview surveys. As a result it became clear that they can have ordinary working lives and improve their QOL through progress in accessibility, accommodated facilities and personal assisting devices.

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When a person with visual impairment attempts to cross the road without any assistive systems such as audible pedestrian signals, it is hard to judge correctly the direction to cross the road and the timing to start walking. Recently, the assistive guiding and wayfinding system which utilizes the infra-red (IR) technology has been developed and applied to assist the visually impaired persons to cross the intersection in Japan. The same system is used as an audible signage in the United States. When using this system, the user has a hand held IR receiver terminal and moves it horizontally to search the direction of the IR transmitter. When the user finds the direction, he/she starts walking toward that identified direction. This study examines the coordination between the direction of the terminal held by the user and the direction of human sense of the user. The result shows, when moving the hand held terminal with keeping elbows close to his/her sides, the user can find the walking direction more correctly and walk toward the identified direction more precisely. In addition, when using the receiver with 10 degrees of light receiving angle, the user can find the walking direction that is similar to the one identified in the case of using the modern tactile walking surface indicator.

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At a large earthquake, it is anticipated that many people will be injured by furniture overturning in the houses. The measures to prevent such accidents should be needed, especially in the case of the elderly and the handicapped person. We tried to establish the volunteer movement which called on "KAGUTENBOU-TAI" in January, 2005. That movement is to fix the furniture to the wall and the floor with the assistants of social workers who support the elderly and the handicapped person in Nagoya City. And in the volunteer movement, workers who fixed the furniture to the wall and the floor took traning. The PDCA cycle was adopted in that movement and the check and the improvement of the activity were executed. The movement with reliability is needed for dispelling anxiety of the elderly and the handicapped person. The network of the high-quality movement which contains social workers and contractors should be needed. In this paper, we reported on the philosophy, history and estimation of the movement, and also discussed its challenges and foresight for the future.

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The role of acoustic guide signals is to lead users to destination points and is able to be achieved when a signal can be localized supposed point. However, there is little scientific evidence that acoustical guide signals, those are currently used in Japan, can play their role. This study intends to evaluate sound localization performance of typical acoustical guide signals and required time to judge directions of those signals by visually impaired person including older persons. The results of experiment reveals following two points: 1) evaluation of sound localization of each signal, 2) relationship between behavior of listeners and properties of signals. Furthermore, guide signals for older users would be discussed.

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