In Japan, policies for people with disabilities has been strengthened step by step by the amendment to the Basic Act for Persons with Disabilities in 2011, the establishment of the Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities in 2013, and the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2014. These legislations call for public and private sectors to respond to information accessibility and can especially be interpreted as mandatory for public institutions. However, information accessibility has not actually progressed in practice. Other countries are enforcing obligations for information accessibility to both public and private sectors and the enforcement power is stronger than in Japan. It is appropriate for Japan to mandate information accessibility since new technologies of information and communications equipment and services can solve accessibility issues easily.

Along with the aging population, the number of voters with disabilities is increasing. In order to provide information accessibility, it is necessary to account for the types and degree of disabilities and means of communicating, rather than to depend upon stereotyped responses such as providing sign language for deaf or hard-of-hearing voters, or braille for blind or visually impaired voters. This paper aims to clarify the current situation and challenges posed by policies regarding the access of voters with disabilities to political information in Japan using the council's conference proceedings and newspaper articles. This political information includes sign language interpretation with subtitles in election broadcasts and braille transcription and transliteration within election bulletins.

Our analysis revealed impediments to provision of appropriate means of accommodating hearing impaired voters in parliamentary election broadcasts, as the House of Representatives does not permit subtitling in its proportional representation contests and the House of Councilors does not permit subtitles or sign language interpreters regarding single–member district contests. Meanwhile, election bulletins were transliterated into braille in all prefectures yet had not been transliterated into enlarged characters in more than half of prefectures in the past ten years. In order to guarantee equal access to election information, it is vital to form a consensus among both policymakers and voters regarding how to provide the election information to voters with disabilities and who is responsible for it. This paper identifies the issues necessary for policy development.

This paper addresses the relation between disabilities and copyright law. We propose institutional design considering social inclusion in order to ensure better information accessibility so that disabled people use copyrighted works. First, this paper surveys outline of the Marrakesh Treaty and clarifies the current situation and problems of Japanese Copyright Law. Second, since disabilities are caused by interactions between dysfunctions and social barriers, from the viewpoint of securing accessibility, it is necessary to aim for elimination of social barriers in the design of institutions of rights limitations or exceptions of copyrights. From this point of view, in order to realize " social inclusion ", the copyright law also needs flexible system design such as examining general and inclusive articles to limit copyrights for the welfare of persons with disabilities.

Older people and people with disabilities are becoming more dependent on Web sites, so service access via the Web is now seen as a basic necessity. The accessibility of local government sites is particularly important, as they provide information important for everyday life. For this paper, we randomly selected 30 local governments, and checked whether they had published a Web accessibility policy. We also conducted expert evaluations of the accessibility of their Web sites by following the Japanese Industrial Standards, JIS X 8341-3 in 2013 and 2017. In 2017, only 23.3% of the local governments published their Web accessibility policy. Although the ratio with which the criteria of the standard were satisfied increased from 2013 to 2017, it was also found that, as of 2017, no site satisfied all of the success criteria. We used the results to analyze the frequent problems with accessibility, and elucidated the barriers to accessible Web sites.

It would be fair to argue that compelled commercial speech is generally intended to provide information necessary for our lives and thus will contribute to individual decisions. Such decisions will promote not only the values of self-realization but also those of self-governance, both of which are rationales to ensure freedom of expression, through correcting the defects of the marketplace of ideas by the disclosure of certain useful information. This positive effect will be balanced with the negative one to diminish the extent of autonomy or self-realization of commercial speakers, by which compelled commercial speech is justified constitutionally. What is more, as compelled commercial speech does not completely deprive business entities of the opportunities of expression, the extent of the negative effect will be relatively small. On the other hand, commercial speech restrictions can decrease the extent of self-fulfillment of commercial speakers one-sidedly without the abovementioned positive effect. Therefore, it is easier to testify the validity of compelled commercial speech than that of commercial speech restrictions. It implies that commercial speakers have a limited degree of freedom in selecting commercial information disclosed to the general public as necessary for their lives. This conclusion postulates that the purpose of a compelled commercial speech system is exclusively designed to promote and facilitate commercial transactions, not to compel disclosure of the ideas of commercial speakers. In the latter case, the system may harm not only the freedom of expression but also that of thought and conscience, which is firmly protected under the Constitution of Japan.

This study tries to evaluate problems surrounding the transition from public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) to IP networks that affect both the current users of PSTN and competitive carriers. For this purpose, this study surveys discussions on the transition based on four perspectives: (1) consumeroriented, (2) forward-looking, (3) competitive neutrality and (4) proportionality of regulation. It is organised in the following manner. First, it clarifies the background of the transition, especially the impact of the diffusion of broadband Internet and mobile technologies. Second, it surveys a series of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT)'s migration proposals published since 2010. Third, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC)'s investigation responding to NTT's proposals is summarised. Fourth, problems regarding the transition are evaluated by contrasting NTT's proposals and MIC's reports. Finally, the study infers four important remarks based on the above analysis.

It must be acknowledged that the evaluations and remarks are premature because discussions on the transition are still in progress and the details of the transition have not yet been officially published.