(b. 1958) is a blind Japanese

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, known for her work at

IBM Research – Tokyo IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...

accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

.. A

Netscape browser Netscape Browser (or ''Netscape 8'') is the eighth major release of the Netscape series of web browsers, now all discontinued. It was published by AOL, but developed by Mercurial Communications, and originally released for Windows on May 19, 20 ...

plug-in she developed, the

IBM Home Page Reader Home Page Reader (Hpr) was a computer program, a self-voicing web browser designed for people who are blind. It was developed by IBM from the work of Chieko Asakawa at IBM Japan. The screen reader met World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML 4.01 s ...

, became the most widely used web-to-speech system available. She is the recipient of numerous industry and government awards.

Education and career

Asakawa was born with normal sight, but after she injured her

optic nerve In neuroanatomy, the optic nerve, also known as the second cranial nerve, cranial nerve II, or simply CN II, is a paired cranial nerve that transmits visual system, visual information from the retina to the brain. In humans, the optic nerve i ...

when she hit her left eye on the side of a swimming pool at age 11, she began losing her sight, and by age 14 she was fully blind. She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature at

Otemon Gakuin University is a private university at Ibaraki, Osaka, Japan, founded in 1966. (Otemon Gakuin was founded in 1888. It has its origins in the elementary school attached to Osaka Kaikosha, whose foundation was proposed by Tomonosuke Takashima.) Alumni * Te ...

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

in 1982 and then began a two-year computer programming course for blind people using an

Optacon The Optacon (OPtical to TActile CONverter) is an electromechanical device that enables blind people to read printed material that has not been transcribed into Braille. The device consists of two parts: a scanner which the user runs over the mater ...

to translate print to tactile sensation. She joined IBM Research with a temporary position in 1984, and became a permanent staff researcher there one year later. In 2004 she earned a Ph.D. in engineering from the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

Contributions

Asakawa's research projects have included developing a

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

for

Braille Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are Blindness, blind, Deafblindness, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on Paper embossing, embossed paper ...

documents, developing a

digital library A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital me ...

for Braille documents, developing an application to improve accessibility of streaming services, developing a

plug-in that converted text to speech and provided a more convenient web navigation mechanism for blind people, and developing a system that would allow sighted web designers to experience the web as blind people.. Her browser plugin became a 1997 IBM product, the

, and within five years it had become the most widely used web-to-speech system available.. More recently her work has also studied accessible control of

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

content, technological and social changes that would allow elderly people to work for more years before retiring, and the development of technology that would make the physical world more accessible to blind people. Currently, Asakawa has finished working on a lightweight suitcase robot helping blind people navigate through complicated terrain.

Awards and honors

Asakawa was added to the

Women in Technology International Women in Technology International (WITI) is an organization promoting the achievements of women in technology and extending support, opportunities, and inspiration. It was founded by Carolyn Leighton in 1989 as the International Network of Women in ...

Hall of Fame A hall, wall, or walk of fame is a list of individuals, achievements, or other entities, usually chosen by a group of electors, to mark their excellence or Wiktionary:fame, fame in their field. In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actu ...

in 2003. She became an

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...

, IBM's top honor for its employees, in 2009, becoming the fifth Japanese person and first Japanese woman with that honor. In 2011 the

Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology AnitaB.org (formerly Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and Institute for Women in Technology) is a global nonprofit organization based in Belmont, California. Founded by computer scientists Anita Borg and Telle Whitney, the institute' ...

gave her their Women of Vision Award. She was a keynote speaker at the Fourth International Conference on Software Development for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAIE 2012).. In 2013 the Japanese government awarded her their Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon.. A paper she wrote in 1998 with Takashi Itoh describing their work on web user interfaces for blind people was the winner of the 2013 ACM

SIGACCESS ACM SIGACCESS is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Accessible computing, an interdisciplinary group of academic and industrial researchers, clinicians and rehabilitation personnel, policy makers, end users, and st ...

Impact Award. In 2017, she was elected as an international member of the US

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

for developing technologies for the visually impaired to access digital information.

References

External links

IBM employee profile
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Asakawa, Chieko Living people Japanese computer scientists Japanese women computer scientists IBM Fellows Blind academics Japanese blind people University of Tokyo alumni Recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon Foreign associates of the National Academy of Engineering People from Osaka 20th-century Japanese engineers 20th-century women engineers 21st-century Japanese engineers 21st-century women engineers Year of birth missing (living people) Scientists with disabilities