Naoki Kurano,
Managing Director of Head Office
The Japanese Federation of the Deaf

In launching the Digital Agency in September this year, the national government set out a vision of a digital society, "A society contributing to the diverse happiness of every individual by allowing them to choose digital services suited to their needs through the use of digital technology."

Accelerating the introduction of ICT into work related to welfare services for people with disabilities is likely to reduce the workload on welfare workers, as it will improve the efficiency of support suited to the various types of services for individual users and facilitate the sharing of information among staff.

For people with disabilities as well, the development of ICT technology and the digitalization of society will promote not only acquisition of information, but also barrier-free and accessibility to information in education, employment, daily life, and social participation. ICT technology and the digitalization is expected to become a major force in building an inclusive society.

For example, people with hearing impairments find it challenging to communicate when shopping or at reception areas. It used to be a bit of a struggle to get a pen and paper ready for communicating with these people. But nowadays, speech recognition technology is not uncommon, so it is used to make minutes at work and for small searches. Moreover, this has made it easier for both parties to communicate with each other, as the other person can easily speak to their smartphone and show the converted text to the listener.

In addition, a "telephone relay service" was launched in July this year as public infrastructure, connecting people with hearing impairments and hearing person through immediate two-way communication in sign language[1] and text using computers and smartphones. Thus, thanks to the innovation of ICT technology, the barrier that has long stood in the way of the hearing impaired, "not being able to use the telephone," has finally been eliminated. However, the welfare services and systems used by people with hearing impairments are still not entirely equipped with the latest ICT technology.

For example, one of the ways information is acquired is through sign language and films with subtitles. The amendment of the Copyright Act allows public libraries to provide more informational services to people with disabilities, while producing and lending reproductions to people with hearing impairments via sign language and subtitles. Moreover, the Agency for Cultural Affairs aims to submit a bill to the Diet this year to amend the Copyright Act to allow libraries to make electronic data of books and other materials available to users on their smartphones and computers.

At present, reproductions for people with hearing impairments are produced and lent out by the 54 information centers for the hearing impaired located throughout the country. It would be helpful if libraries and these information centers for the hearing impaired could cooperate so that reproductions could be borrowed from public libraries, but this has not occurred as of yet.

Bureaucratic sectionalism, caused by different laws, is one obstacle. For example, information facilities for the hearing impaired are governed by the Act on Welfare of Physically Disabled Persons, while the Library Law governs public libraries. Moreover, information facilities for the hearing impaired still use analog methods such as face-to-face or mail to lend out reproductions. Thus, the welfare system and services are likely to have been the most left behind by digitalization.

Although Article 37-5 of the Copyright Act requires the payment of compensation for the lending of "reproductions for the hearing impaired," there are no standards or systems in place for the payment of compensation. We believe that this is a primary reason why public libraries have not produced and lent "reproductions for the hearing impaired."

With the Reading Barrier-Free Act and the revision of the Copyright Act, the production and lending of accessible books and films will be further digitized in the future, making it even more convenient for people with disabilities.

However, as long as there is a problem with Article 37-5 of the Copyright Act, we are deeply concerned that people who have hearing impairments will be left out of the benefits of digitalization, so we will urge the government to amend the Act.