The practical side of teaching the elderly visually impaired users to use the e-mail.
Takuya Nishimoto, Masahiro Araki, Yasuhisa Niimi · 2001
INTRODUCTION According to the survey by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1996, there are 305,000 visually impaired persons in Japan. Those who can use Braille among them are less than 10%. Braille is not commonly used because it is especially difficult for the elderly visually impaired persons to learn Braille. On the other hand, only 1,000 blind persons can use personal computer (PC), according to the survey. It is important for visually impaired persons to use Internet with voice, which gives the way of real-time communication and the chance of attending social activities. In recent years, Japanese Text-toSpeech (TTS) systems were available on the standard PC with audio output, though they required additional hardware. These days, there are some screen-readers for the Japanese version of Microsoft Windows, which help the visually impaired persons to access web and read or write e-mail. They are sold at low prices and do not require any additional hardware. Th