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Chieko Asakawa



Profile

Photo: Chieko Asakawa How information technology can help improve quality of life for all? Think of ways to easily access products and information without using sense of vision to communicate and interact, and think of an interface which will adapt user needs. Chieko, an expert in accessibility research and blind since the age of fourteen, is working on answering these questions.

Chieko has been instrumental in accessibility research and development for the past two decades. Her early digital Braille work in the 1980's is still bringing benefit to the blind community in Japan to access books. In 1997, her work on the groundbreaking voice browser called IBM Home Page Reader, which was made available in the U.S., Europe and Asia, opened up the new information resource for the blind - the Web. Its interface technology has been widely adopted by other voice browsers.

As visual user interface and multimedia content has become popular on the Internet in recent years, Chieko has been working on finding ways for visually impaired people to also enjoy the benefits of these advances. Chieko and her team have developed a number of pioneering technologies, including a disability simulator called aDesigner which helps Web designers identify potential design issues to make their websites more friendly to all; a tool called aiBrowser which, for the first time, helps visually impaired users to access streaming video, animation and other visual content online. Also, Chieko and teams in IBM developed the Accessibility Tools Framework which offers standardized design and application programming interfaces, allowing developers to easily and cost effectively create accessibility tools and applications. Contribution of these technologies and the framework to the open source community, Eclipse Foundation, may help stimulate assistive software innovation to advance Web 2.0 content accessibility.

The latest research project Chieko has been leading since the summer of 2008 is called the Social Accessibility project. Based on collaboration software developed by her team, it creates an open, collaborative environment where blind users, developers and sighted "supporters" work together to solve real life Web accessibility issues raised by blind users.

Chieko joined IBM in 1985 after completing the computer science courses for the blind at Lighthouse Japan. She received a B.A. degree in English literature from Ottemon University in 1982, and a Ph.D in Engineering from The University of Tokyo in 2004.

She is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan, the Information Processing Society of Japan, and IBM Academy of Technology. She has been supporting accessibility related open standards efforts, and she is currently serving as a co-general chair for the international conference for Web accessibility (W4A) 2010. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 2003, and both within and outside of IBM, she has been actively working to help women engineers pursue technical careers. Chieko was appointed to IBM Fellow in 2009, IBM's most prestigious technical honor.

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Publications

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Awards

2011

  • ABI (Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology): Women of Vision Award
  • Award from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
    (Chieko Asakawa, Hironobu Takagi, Kentarou Fukuda, Takashi Itoh)

2010

  • SWE (Society of Women Engineers): Achievement Award
  • 2010 Information Processing Society of Japan Fellow

2009

  • Information Processing Society of Japan "Kiyasu Special Industrial Achievement Award"
    (Chieko Asakawa, Takashi Itoh, Hironobu Takagi, Kentarou Fukuda, Junji Maeda)

2006

  • Nagoya Light-House, "The first Kondo-Masaaki Award"

2005

  • Japan Advertisers Association INC "Web Creation Award"

2004

  • Nikkei BP "Japan Innovator Award"
  • The Society of Japanese Women Scientists (SJWS) "A merit award for the accessibility research"

2003

  • Nikkei WOMAN "Nikkei Woman of the Year 2004, The 2nd place synthesis"
  • Yamato City "The Mayor's Citizen Award"
  • The Women in Technology International (WITI) "The WITI Hall of Fame 2003"

2002

  • ACM SIGCAPH (ACM) "The Best Paper Award ACM ASSETS 2002" (Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa)

1999

  • The Minister of Health and Welfare "Award from (MHW) the Minister of Health and Welfare for accessibility research activities 1999"

1998

  • ACM SIGCAPH (ACM)　"The Best Presentation Award ACM ASSETS 1998"

1996

  • Information Processing Society of Japan "Best Paper Award for Young Researcher"

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