Photo Credit: National Inventors Hall of Fame Website
(https://www.invent.org/inductees/chieko-asakawa), “Courtesy of IBM.”
When Chieko Asakawa became blind at age fourteen in an accident, she felt that she had not only lost her eyesight but also her independence. Once an athletic teen, she now needed help with everyday tasks. “Things that until then seemed simple became almost impossible to do alone,” she recalled in a TED Talk.
Her quest for independence led her to innovate. While at university, Asakawa found the prevailing accessibility tool of the 1970s— the Optacon— to be difficult and imprecise. The device translated printed text into vibrations using a camera and a vibration board, but required manual control of the camera, and many vibrations were hard to interpret. It was then that she realized that computers might offer a more effective way for blind users to overcome such limitations.
In 1997, Asakawa invented and successfully patented the Home Page Reader (HPR), the world’s first voice browser to provide effective Internet access for visually impaired computer users. Under U.S. patent No. 7,197,462, HPR enabled users to independently navigate the Web using a simple numeric keypad that converted text and icons to speech. The HPR could speak text, describe images and graphical elements, and allow users to differentiate content using unique solutions (e.g., reading hyperlinks in a female voice and plain text in a male voice).
Since then, Asakawa has continued to advance accessibility tools, creating the Braille Editing System (BES) to enable direct Braille input and on-screen editing, and launching the Braille Forum Network, a platform for sharing and downloading digital Braille books.
More recently, Asakawa has been investigating how artificial intelligence can help people with disabilities achieve greater independence in their daily lives. In 2014, she partnered with Carnegie Mellon researchers to develop NavCog. This smartphone app, much like an indoor GPS, helps users move through indoor locations like campuses, malls, or airports without assistance from another person. In 2021, Asakawa and her IBM team developed LineChaser, an AI-driven assistive app that navigates a blind or visually impaired person to the end of a line.
One of her longest-running projects has been the “AI Suitcase.” Recognizing the limitations of a smartphone app, in 2017 Asakawa conceived and developed a new type of navigation robot that uses voice interaction and motorized wheels to autonomously navigate users to their destination. The pilot service for this technology is now available at Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan).
“My goal is to be able to travel and do things that are simple to you,” shared Asakawa, “and by using cognitive assistance to augment missing or weakened abilities, people with limitations can gain independence.”
Dr. Asakawa began her career at IBM in 1985 and earned her Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2004. In 2009, she became the first Japanese woman to be honored as an IBM Fellow. Over the years, she has received numerous accolades, including the Achievement Award from the Society of Women Engineers, and holds over 20 patents. Today, she has joined the ranks of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and serves as the chief executive director of Miraikan.
Sources:
How New Technology Helps Blind People Explore the World | Chieko Asakawa | TED Talks
Coding Accessibility: Dr. Asakawa | Building autonomy with AI
National Inventors Hall of Fame | Chieko Asakawa
Learn more about Chieko Asakawa’s innovations:
Authors: Seung Sub “Elvis” Kim and Aarati Parajulee