Yoshiaki Takahashi
President, Office Yui Asia Limited

What is Yubidenwa?

Yubidenwa offers an app and contents for people who have difficulty in using their voices to speak or operating an iPad screen with their fingers. It is characterised by fluent synthetic speech and the high degree of freedom with which it can be used.

Contents are the substance of things created with the app. For example, Word and Excel are apps; the documents or sheets which you make with them are contents. The contents vary according to the aims of the app’s users and the ways in which they use it.

The function of tapping the screen to talk in fluent synthetic speech is the cornerstone of the Yubidenwa app. The contents of Yubidenwa include the ability to change the display on the screen to fit the user and make it easier for them to tap, and to select cards displayed on the screen in order to talk. Moreover, it is structured so that the user can send messages, play music, and control appliances such as an air conditioner or television in partnership with products from other companies.

Communication is an important issue for everyone

Yubidenwa originally came into being as an app for business, prompted by wondering whether there might be a way to make phone calls in places where you are not allowed to speak, such as on a train or in an art gallery.

People who had lost their voices due to cancer of the larynx began to use it instead of their own voices in their daily lives, and the app evolved to allow people who had aphasia as an aftereffect of strokes to choose pictures representing the words they wanted to say. It has continued to be improved to make the screen easier to operate with slight finger movements by people who have difficulty moving their bodies due to illness or injury, and has come to be used not only for conversations but for creating educational materials and rehabilitation exercises.

As a result, it is now used by a wide variety of people, including those with cancer of the larynx or tongue, SMA (spinal muscular atrophy), ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), muscular dystrophy, multiple system atrophy, congenital myopathy, cerebral palsy, aphasia, selective mutism, autism, and so on. At special needs schools, by creating cards about subjects in which the children are interested, more and more children have a sparkle in their eyes as they look at the iPad screen and operate switches with fingers which they can only move slightly.

It is not a product adapted specifically for a particular illness or disability, but communication is fundamentally important to everyone, irrespective of illness or disability; moreover, people with the same illness have different physical conditions, and different wishes and thoughts. As we developed Yubidenwa, we kept in mind that we wanted it to become an app which left “blank spaces”, allowing people to communicate not only practical matters but also their feelings.

People with ALS, aphasia, and cerebral palsy; people of all ages, from adults to children – I do not think there are many cases where everyone uses the same communication functions. I am confident that this is because we put together the product with our focus on communication, not on disability or illness. Many times, we came across people with illnesses or disabilities that we did not know about, who were using it in ways which we had not imagined; but we all share a common wish to be able to enjoy communicating. I am grateful to all the users and therapists who helped to nurture our product.

Law of the conservation of energy

Yubidenwa was designed to enable ease of use and allow the tempo of the conversation to be sustained by preparing fixed phrases in advance for ease of selection, rather than having to choose everything from the 50 syllables of the Japanese alphabet each time.

Reducing the time spent on operations each time creates some leeway. This leftover time and energy can be used for something else. A person with SMA talked about this way of making things easier with Yubidenwa as “the law of the conservation of energy”. This person is able to speak with their own voice, but gets tired after talking for a long time. So they have registered the content of requests for their helper or explanations of how to carry out tasks which they would like doing on Yubidenwa, and communicate these via speech when necessary. However many times they explain the same thing, they do not get tired, nor do they make mistakes or forget to say anything.

Picture 1 App screen

Speaking with fluent synthetic speech by choosing a card is the cornerstone of the app (right), but you can turn it into a function allowing you to operate home appliances by choosing a card in the same way (left).

The joy of being able to do more things

Being able to speak with fluent synthetic speech is one of the distinguishing features of Yubidenwa, but operating home appliances is what is popular lately. Recently, home electronics which can be operated via an iPad app, known as smart appliances, have gone on sale; products such as Nature Remo, which allow appliances using conventional infrared remote controls to be operated from an iPad, are also available. Lights or the television are operated using the app, but pressing tiny buttons on the screen, let alone switches, is particularly hard for people who have trouble operating things with their fingers.

By using Yubidenwa, the user can display a screen which is easy to operate with switches or fingers; or if they arwe able to choose a single card, various things become possible.

Rakusho Plus from Paramount Bed Co., Ltd. is a bed which can be operated using an iPad. The app can be summoned via Yubidenwa, and the user can return to Yubidenwa from the app. The iPad can be operated using switches, allowing the user to change the angle of the bed by themself.

A woman in her 60s with ALS expressed her joy, saying “I used to be able to do less and less each day, but it is fun since I started using Yubidenwa because each day I can do more and more”.

A product which pays attention to accessibility

If it is difficult for someone to operate Yubidenwa by tapping the screen with a finger, there are various other ways to use it, including with a mouse or track pad, switches operated by tiny or big movements of the body, voice, or gaze. It can be used with voiceovers by people with limited vision, or by reading aloud the switch controls if people cannot touch the screen with their fingers. Various different methods of operation can be imagined, but whichever the method, Yubidenwa incorporates mechanisms to make it easy to use.

If you can manage the simple operation of choosing one card, you can use Yubidenwa. If you choose a card, you become able to do things like speak, send a message or an email, play music, or operate home appliances, but all the user needs to learn how to do is to choose a single card.

Yubidenwa is not a specialized machine for specific functions. You can choose how to use it according to your physical state and your goals. Freedom of choice is the cornerstone of accessibility.

Picture 2 Usage screen

A person operates switches while looking at the Yubidenwa screen from their bed. An iPad has the added attraction of eliminating clutter around the bed.

Current situation, issues, and future development

A woman in her 20s with SMA, who uses Yubidenwa, apparently learned that a woman with ALS whom she had met on social media was struggling with communication, and told her, “I would like to make Yubidenwa cards for you”.

This is support work. It might be difficult for the woman with SMA to work fulltime, but I think that it would be great if she could work when she was able, whether that were for a few hours a month or an hour each day. If, furthermore, she could be of use to someone through Yubidenwa and her iPad, which she uses regularly, and if this could become a job, that would be two birds with one stone. There are many rehabilitation staff who do not know about accessibility devices, but the people for whom it is second nature to use these every day could become their teachers.

However, getting this up and running and creating a sustainable business is not such a simple task. We need to get society involved to create a framework which goes beyond the bounds of Yubidenwa. In order to do this, we need many people to gain a shared understanding that communication is an important part of human life, as important as protecting life itself. I think that Yubidenwa can prompt this to happen. I value our motto that Yubidenwa is not a device but an opportunity.

◆Yubidenwa website (Japanese):  https://www.yubidenwa.jp/