National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, AIST has been developing a database on human sensory abilities of older people and people with disabilities for the development of international and/or national standards related to accessible design as well as for direct use in industry in developing human-centered design for those people. This article introduces an overview of the database with its scope and history of the development.

The main purposes of this study are to propose a design of the re-opening/closing elevator buttons that can be easily distinguished from each other and to evaluate the effect of the easiness of distinction between these buttons. We conducted three different experiments. We divided the design of the elevator buttons into five elements: Illustration, Base color, Illustration color, Width of re-opening button and Ruby. The first experiment to evaluate the effect of the easiness of illustrations to distinguish re-opening button from the closing button showed that the illustration based on Face distinguished the re-opening button from the closing button most easily. The second experiment to evaluate the effect of the easiness of distinction in each element showed that illustrations based on Face （illustration）, White （base color） and 1.25 times width distinguished the re-opening button from the closing button easily. The third experiment to evaluate the effect of the elements that were found to make the re-opening/closing buttons more distinguishable showed that partial optimization of existing designs could reduce mistaking the re-opening button for the closing button. In conclusion, we proposed a design of the re-opening/closing elevator buttons that can be easily distinguished from each other, and we evaluated the easiness of distinction regarding five divided design elements.

Effective risk management was necessary for alpine ski racers to achieve their high performance and long athletic careers. Hence, this study identified risk factors for sports injuries among Japanese alpine ski racers. Through a semi-structured interview, this study collected a total of 853 episodes about the potential risks from Japanese alpine ski racers （n＝24, male＝15, female＝9）. On the basis of Spörri J et al's study （2012）, researchers elucidated 39 risk factors with six categories （athletes, tools, course, snow, weather, and information） from the 853 episodes. Moreover, multiple correspondence analysis revealed characteristic four categories. These findings with narrative evidence were useful for alpine ski racers and staff members to examine the potential risks and to prevent sports injuries.

Evaluation based on estimating user performance time is useful for GUI system design. It estimates performance time by constructing a cognitive model related to user's performance and fitting the basic time value to this model. On the other hand, the conventional method's estimation accuracy is not high, and it has been pointed out that the estimated value when using KLM during the visual search of the item group is 30 to 40％ longer than the actual measurement value. In this paper, we analyzed gaze points during natural visual search such as “skim reading” of item groups. As a result, the subjects perceived and were cognitive processing only the items having the same external appearance features （number of characters, type of letters, etc.） as the target item. In addition, up to three items having the same external appearance features within the parafovea were recognized simultaneously from one gazing. As a result of constructing a cognitive model based on these results and estimating the performance time, the difference between the estimated value and the measured average value was a maximum of 16％. From this result, improvement of estimation accuracy was confirmed.

An ultrasonography requires a sonographer to work in a dark room while viewing images on a monitor. This can result in eye strain and subjective fatigue. Furthermore, sonographers often are forced to work in an unnatural posture and they are suffering from subjective fatigue in their arms and shoulders as well. This report adresses the correlation between operator's subjective fatigue and illuminance of ultrasonography room. The following brightness parameters were measured at five ultrasonography facilities ambient illuminance of the room,and ultrasonograph monitor surface illuminance and luminance. The subjective fatigue was measured by testing visual acuity of 29 sonographers working at above mentioned menitioned facilities, and interviewing them subjective symptoms. A difference in illuminance of 0.05～50 lx was observed among the rooms. Two facilities used darkened rooms, whereas three used down-lighting, thereby allowing comparison between bright and dark rooms. Sonographers appeal their physical and eye fatigue more often in the evening than morning, and it is considered that the performing of ultrasonography itself causes eye strain. Sonographers were found to have increased complaints in dark rooms. It is necessary to establish the criteria for lighting in ultrasonography rooms and the conditions for reducing the sonographer's subjective fatigue.