Ayaka Ozawa
Non-Profit Organization: Support Technology Development Institute

I was diagnosed with dyslexia during spring break of my second grade of elementary school. My symptoms were difficulty in reading hiragana and recognizing which letters should be separated to from a chunk of meaning. When reading the characters, it was difficult to distinguish between “きょう“ (today) and “ きのう“ (yesterday) because the “よ“ in “きょう　“ and “の“ in “きのう“ look similar, as shown in the left image of the below figure.　Additionally, after reading for a long time, I got tired, and focus shifted, causing the letters to appear blurry, as shown in the right image of the below figure. However, each person with dyslexia sees letters in a different way.

From the third to sixth grade of elementary school, I attended the LD (Learning Disability) Center at Osaka Medical University, where I received training focused on developing strengths and compensating for weaknesses. Then, during the winter of fifth grade, I encountered DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System). The synchronization of text highlighting with audio became a great help, and I was able to understand the content of textbooks much better.

In junior high school, I didn't receive any specific support, and I continued to struggle during exams. However, upon entering high school, I began receiving special accommodations such as enlarged test papers, extended time, and separate rooms for exams. Thanks to these accommodations, my grades improved, and I subsequently passed the university entrance exams while being denied the consideration of using DAISY for the National Center Test for University Admissions. I entered university directly and even went on to pursue graduate studies. At the university, I received accommodations such as PC reading and separate rooms for regular exams, and course materials were provided in data format as much as possible.

I am currently involved in lectures, producing DAISY textbooks, and verifying playback software to promote DAISY using my own experiences at the Support Technology Development Institute. As part of my activities, I participate in the Japan DAISY Consortium Technical Committee to ensure that publishers release books in an accessible format called EPUB3 (Note).

Just as everyone wears glasses when they are nearsighted or farsighted, glasses for individuals with dyslexia correspond to the overall living environment, consisting of ICT infrastructure like DAISY, educational settings (parental and teacher attitudes and skills, etc.), and social policies. I hope that by creating a society that guarantees such a living environment, what is now called a disability will no longer feel like a disability, and each individual can excel in their confident fields.

Since high school, I have been vaguely pursuing the goal of creating an environment where as many people as possible can receive the necessary support they need. Furthermore, within the next year and a half, the obligation to provide reasonable accommodations under the Act on the Elimination of Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities will also be extended to the private sector. Initially, by participating in as many lectures as possible, I hope to increase awareness of DAISY and dyslexia among a wide range of people, providing them with more choices to overcome difficulties. However, it is difficult to do everything by myself to reach my goals, so I would like to challenge myself little by little and increase what I can do while receiving support for what I find difficult.
Furthermore, by disseminating information through social media, schools, libraries, and other places where people frequently gather, I aim to foster connections with individuals of the same and different generations who have disabilities like dyslexia, carrying their hopes. By involving publishers, libraries, volunteers, the government, schools, and many others, I would like to make this a proactive year where cooperation is fostered.

(Note)Accessible EPUB3 which is the file format for electronic books used by publishers, was developed to have the same functionalities as DAISY, thanks to the contributions of the developers who have been involved in EPUB development since the early stages.