Japanese Princess Kako attended the 40th national high school sign language speech contest held in Tokyo on Sunday.
This is the second time that Princess Kako has attended the contest on her own.
“I strongly hope that a society where everyone can have a wider range of choices will be created,” the princess, the second daughter of Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko, said using sign language. Princess Kako gave applause to each of the 10 high school students who joined the event.
This is the second time that Princess Kako has attended the contest on her own.
Competitions in 21 sports disciplines will be held at 17 venues during the Deaflympic Games in Tokyo, which will take place in 2025 from Nov. 15 to 26. Roughly 3,000 athletes from 70 to 80 countries and regions will participate.
In November 2022, hearings for a damages lawsuit after a girl with impaired hearing was killed in a traffic accident in 2018, estimating lost wages have become a key point of contention.
The Osaka District Court ruled on February 27th that the defendant pay approximately 37.7 million yen. This amount – 85% of the average wage – it was ruled, was the amount Ayuka Ide might have earned in the future as Ayuka Ide was able to “use various means and techniques to reduce the impact of her hearing impairment.”
The Summer Deaflympics, an international sporting event for the hearing impaired, will be held in Tokyo in 2025. This is the first time Japan will host the Deaflympics, and follows Tokyo’s hosting of the Paralympics in 2021, another major international sporting event for the disabled.
From August 30th, Lawson will install a pointing sheet at the checkout counters at all stores so that people with hearing disabilities can shop with peace of mind. It is said that this is because the staff members have also started wearing masks due to the corona crisis, making it difficult to understand what they are saying by looking at their mouths.
East Japan Railway Co, or JR East, and others started Wednesday a trial at the railway operator’s Ueno Station in Tokyo of a system to convert station announcements and train sounds into words to assist deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
Glasses showing movie subtitles and texts describing scenes and sound effects on the lenses are helping the hard of hearing enjoy their time at the movies in Japan.
Legislation is expected to be passed in the current parliamentary session to support persons with disabilities to obtain the same information they need in their daily lives and during disasters as able-bodied persons, with the aim of eliminating disparities. Issues have been raised regarding the acquisition of information by persons with disabilities, such as the fact that subtitles and sign language interpreters are sometimes not provided for disaster news.
A system jointly developed by the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo and SoftBank Corp. converts sign-language gestures into written text.
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