ACM ByteCast - Chieko Asakawa - Episode 64

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

In this episode, part of a special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)’s For Your Informatics podcast, Sabrina Hsueh hosts accessibility researcher and inventor Chieko Asakawa, an IBM Fellow at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, the Chief Executive Director of The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Japan, and an IBM Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Chieko’s inventions include the Home Page Reader (HPR); a word processor for Braille documents; a digital library for Braille documents; an application to improve accessibility of streaming services; and, most recently, the AI Suitcase project. Her career has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards and honors, including becoming the first Japanese woman IBM Fellow in 2009, receiving the “Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon” from the Emperor of Japan in 2013, her induction into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2019, being named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and the ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility in 2024. In the interview, Chieko shares how becoming blind early in life led her to work in accessibility research. She talks about her IBM team’s work on the Home Page Reader, the first practical voice browser to provide effective internet access for blind and visually impaired computer users, as well as more recent work on the AI suitcase, a robot that helps visually impaired people walk around and navigate independently. Chieko and Sabrina touch on AI’s potential in aiding accessibility and the inspiration for the AI Suitcase. She offers advice and best practices for both early and mid-career researchers and interdisciplinary professionals.

This episode is part of a special collaboration between ACM Bytecast and AMIA 4-year Informatics Podcast, a joint podcast series for the Association of Computing Machinery, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, and the American Medical Informatics Association, the world's largest medical informatics community. In this new series, we talk to women leaders, researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice to apply AI to health care and life science.

They share their experiences in their interdisciplinary career path, the lessons learned for health equity, and their own visions for the future of computing. Hello, and welcome to the ACM AMAP joint podcast series. This joint podcast series aims to explore the interdisciplinary fields of medical informatics and AI ML applied to health care. I am Dr. Sabrina Shafe. I'm the host for the Four Year Informatics

with American Medical Informatics Association. I'm also co-hosting this series with the Association of Computing Machinery by CAS series. So today we have the pleasure of speaking with our very special guest today, Dr. Chagall Asakawa. Hi, Dr. Asakawa. Thank you for joining. How are you today? Great. Just for our audience here, who is usually the new researchers and make career, who are working in the interdisciplinary area between AI and medicine.

I will want to introduce your bio a little bit so they can understand your background. Is that okay? Yes, sure. Dr. Chieko Asakawa is a computer scientist who has been dedicating her career to developing innovative accessibility technologies. As a blind woman, she experienced firsthand the challenge of navigating a world design for sighted people. And this inspired her to create groundbreaking tools like the IBM Homepage Reader, and more recently the the AI suitcase,

which Shiro told us more about. Dr. Asakawa's work has earned her numerous awards, including being named as the first Japanese woman to be an IBM Fellow, and also her induction into the National Inventors Hold of Fame. She continues to serve as a leading advocate for accessibility and inclusion in the tech industry.

Today, we cannot wait to dive in deeper with your journey and explore how your expertise can help inspire innovation in other domains. For our audience here, can you share a little bit more about your journey and why you are working in this current interdisciplinary area you are working at between computer science and accessibility? journey. I became totally blind at the age of 14 after hitting my eye on the side of a swimming pool. I then faced two obstacles. One is gaining access to information and the other is losing my independence to move around. After many of life's twists and turns, I joined IBM Research in 1985. I was very fortunate to find the great potential of technology.

I mean, I thought technology may help overcome obstacles. Since then, I have been working on accessibility research. In the mid-90s, I was able to access the web within a lab. It was a kind of a special environment. I was very much impressed because I was able to access any information by myself. And I really wanted to help all blind and visually impaired have access to the Internet. It led me to develop the IBM homepage reader, first in Japanese and later translated into

11 languages. And around that time, I found there is an accessibility conference in ACM called Assets. And I submitted a paper and it was accepted. And fortunately, I received the best paper award in 1998, the paper titled User Interface of a Homepage Reader. a homepage reader. And this paper later received the SIG Access Assets Paper Impact Award. And just this year in 2024, I received SIG Access Award for outstanding contributions to computing and accessibility. I have been presenting and publishing papers at ACM Assets and CHI and I can tell presenting and publishing papers in these

conferences have greatly helped increase the awareness and the importance of accessibility research and technology. And I'm now very happy to see many colleagues all over the world who do accessibility research. Thanks so much for sharing your personal journey with us. The real invention always comes with a real need. But when you are doing this, have you ever confronted any challenges when you need to communicate your ideas to people in other fields?

And any particular challenges you would like to share with us? Yes, of course I have faced many challenges to drive accessibility research. Let me talk about my latest challenge that we are facing right now. We are now developing the AI Suitcase, an autonomous navigation robot for the visual impaired

and confronting many challenges. We have yet to overcome them, but let me share our experience as a good example. Developing and deploying such a robot required a wide range of skills and expertise from many different fields. Building the robot involved not just advanced hardware technology like sensors, motors, batteries, tactile devices, but also software technologies such as image recognition, voice interaction, control systems, to name a few. When running pilot tests, it was important to cooperate with

organizations that manage urban spaces like shopping malls or operate local businesses like shops. In addition to actually use the robot in real world environment, we needed to understand laws and administrative rules and work closely with government agencies. Because you know our AI suitcase is going to be tested both inside and outside. And outside usually has its own laws, like road traffic laws, things like that. So to ensure that the product or technology could reach end users, we also need to create a social system, including a business model, to make advanced assistive

devices accessible to those who need it. Faced with these challenges, we realized that cooperation and collaboration across disciplines and society were essential. And by bringing together experts from different fields and forming partnerships with organizations, we believe we can overcome and move the project forward. So that is my current challenge we are facing and I'm ready to go through. The challenge sounds very complex.

It's almost like you are starting a self-driving car business and that you have to overcome the regulatory policy and go through all those testing environment preparation steps yourself. That's indeed very challenging. But for newcomers who are coming to this field just now, they might not have the kind of resources and experiences you have to overcome those challenges. So how would you recommend those newcomers to start? Is there any earlier career moves that you found very useful that you would like to share with our next generation researchers and practitioners here in the audience?

Yeah, okay. So my first advice to newcomers is if you are interested, no matter your background, no matter your field of study, jump in. In the case of accessibility, accessibility is related to a wide, ever-changing range of research. That knowledge and expertise, experience through accessibility will help you in your future career. In the area of human-computer interaction, an interdisciplinary field is essential. And, of course, gender never matters. It is always good to understand human behavior, ergonomics, cognitive science, psychology, in addition to the computer science. So communicate and collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds.

Importantly, understand the needs of target users. Talk with them. See the world through their eyes. Then your idea will be useful and have more impact. How about for the mid-career professionals? Any additional advice you have for them to come into the interdisciplinary career, like the kind of accessibility research and application work you are doing?

Yeah, so mid-year career means they have already certain skills. So I would advise them to utilize their, you know, able to inject new, novel, unusual perspectives and professions. No matter if you are in your early or mid-career, I want to tell you that there is great potential in accessibility to contribute beyond people's disabilities to the general good. Because his mother was hearing impaired, Alexander Graham Bell dedicated himself to acoustic engineering. His personal experience led to the invention of the telephone. Be boldly curious, and discover your passion. Thank you so much for all that advice. Our audience here will appreciate it.

Going forward, did you have any more tips for people who want to dedicate their careers to improve accessibility? Okay, so first, please define accessibility technology or accessibility research for yourself. Second, I suggest you assume and imagine you have the relevant disability. However, your imagined experience is limited. Third, please talk to real users to understand reality. For example, what and how technology helps. Finally, please create a proposal based on your obtained knowledge and experience,

and discuss with your users. I'm sure you will be able to find how technology can help them improve their quality of life. Thank you. Understanding our users is indeed the key to innovation. And how about AI? Will AI help with accessibility research or introduce more risks of health disparities as what we have seen in other cases? That's a good question. So before the emergence of today's advanced AI, we as accessibility researchers studied how object recognition technology can help the visually impaired identify objects. For example, we worked on identifying drink cans, like if it is for beer, for cider, or water.

It also involved camera aiming and centering without vision. Think about these prior research before current AI. We are almost going to laugh or how technology evolved because the past few years have seen remarkable progress in AI transforming this field entirely. AI is now being used as a tool to augment the vision of visually impaired people, expanding its potential applications. Currently, we can use AI to identify objects and star learnings with greater precision.

It's really great. Looking ahead, we envision advancements that enable automatic captioning for videos, including real-time footage. Yet, AI already allowed everything could overwhelm visually impaired users. We need AI to filter and prioritize information just as sighted individuals do. This would allow visually impaired users to access only the information they truly need in a seamless manner.

This evolution is something I greatly look forward to and I'm committed to advancing research towards that goal. ACM ByCast and AMIA FYI podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and other services. If you're enjoying this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite platform. How about the AI Suitcase you are working on? Can you give us a short intro about that?

The AI Suitcase is a navigational robot for the visual impaired. It helps them reach a destination without hitting any obstacles or without losing their way. It is yet to be ready for public. We have tested the AI suitcase with hundreds of users. Let me share their comments. I feel independent that I've never experienced after I became blind. It's very easy because you just need to follow along. I feel a sense of achievement of walking alone and the freedom of not killing a white cane. I want to bring this robot back to my home. And I really like this one.

I want to give the robot a name like my guide dog. Another memorable comment was, I feel comfortable working naturally in city areas without being recognized as a blind person. I don't feel like people are watching me because I walk confidently. The feedback shows the technology allows people, even with disabilities, Technology allows people even with disabilities to be equally included and thereby improve their quality of life. So I can tell accessibility technology can help people with disabilities live equally and more actively. That's my experience.

What a great contribution. That actually brings me to my next question. When it comes to evaluating accessibility technologies in terms of their accuracy and their quality, are there any best practices you would recommend? Are there any other good examples you can share with us? AI is commonly assessed using standardized datasets. However, when it comes to accessibility, it is essential to evaluate AI in real-life settings by observing how AI functions in users' daily lives.

This is very important where the correct answer varies depending on the context. More importantly, the quality and accuracy of AI designed for accessibility can only be truly evaluated by human. For instance, imagine an AI system that provides spoken descriptions of a landscape. Should it focus on informing the user about the movements of nearby people or should it prioritize reading signs. The correct response changes based on the specific needs and context of the user. To address this, it is very important to provide opportunities for users to engage extensively with the latest AI technologies. I have been concurrently serving as the Chief Executive Director of the National Museum of Emerging Sciences and Innovation. At our science museum in Tokyo, we have been operating an AI suitcase on a daily basis. Furthermore, at the upcoming Osaka-Kansai 2025, actually next year, we plan to conduct a large scale pilot project. This initiative aims to gather substantial user feedback and evaluate

cutting edge AI technologies in real world settings. So I really hope you join us and experience our AI suitcase for yourself and give us your feedback. To close out our discussion here, let us think about policy and government for a moment. Are there any policy changes you would like to see so as to ensure that AI can help improve accessibility safely and responsibly? And if the ideal policies do not already exist yet from your point of view, is there anything else that we should ask for change?

Policy and governance changes are certainly important. However, without societal understanding, new technologies cannot be implemented within society. Therefore, I believe it is crucial to simultaneously work on raising social awareness and making necessary policy changes. So how should we raise social awareness? Will any AI regulation and standardization effort help? In addition, as this particular podcast series aims to also provide awareness on how collaboration between ACM and AMIA can work to help with different interdisciplinary innovations. Is there anything our audience in these two professional societies can help? fully aware of how accessibility is being addressed in discussions on AI regulation and standardization. However, history clearly shows that consideration for accessibility is crucial.

For example, everybody knows about the copyright laws for books. Everybody knows about the copyright laws for books. Because of this law, it allows for conversion of books into braille or audio formats. In web standardization, we have web content accessibility guidelines. These regulations and guidelines really contribute to increase awareness and to adapt accessibility. So I do hope some consideration of accessibility in making AI regulations. For example, some people show some concern in using wearable cameras or smart glasses in public environments. But it is going to be very helpful for the visually impaired to understand the surroundings. So it would be great if it could be used for accessibility purposes with restrictions, such as not storing data or using it for other purposes.

I'm very sure we have many other examples. So I really hope AI regulations will consider such kind of accessibility needs. Thank you so much for helping us distill the need for accessibility consideration and social awareness in the context of policy and regulation. Now, before we reach our closing time, can you share with our audience here

about your recent innovation, AI Suitcase. We heard so much about this in this episode. Please help us understand a bit more of your aspiration and bring it home to us. OK, so let me briefly talk about what the AI Suitcase is. So the AI Suitcase is a navigation robot for the visually impaired. It helps users reach a destination without hitting any obstacles or without losing their way.

And people always ask me why it is suitcase-shaped. The idea came from my own experience. I travel alone with suitcase and white cane, but carrying both suitcase and white cane at the same time at the airport sometimes is too much. So I found a technique to use the suitcase as an alternative for the white cane. So when I used the suitcase as an alternative white cane, I thought if we can integrate technology like perception, AI control, a lot of hardware into suitcase, it can be our travel companion. It made my travel life much easier. So the idea came from my own experience at the airport.

But developing the suitcase needs a lot of expertise, like hardware technology, software technology, things like that. So I have been expanding the team, IBM team, and some companies for sensors, some companies who do human detection, and construction companies to think about how we can distribute it to society. So together with collaborators, we have been developing the AI suitcase. At Carnegie Mellon University, we first started prototyping it with students. The interesting function of the AI suitcase is a handle. Our handle is not just a regular handle.

Within the handle, we embedded some tactile feedback. So when turning right, the right side vibrates, and turning left, the left side vibrates. And when we hold the handle, it starts moving. And when we release it, it stops. So the user interface is very, very simple. And we use a radar, like an autonomous scourer,

to detect obstacles and for localization. And we have three depth cameras to detect humans and the distance towards the human. And inside of the suitcase, we have a GPU computer for the image detection, and we have a regular computer to handle everything, like maps, voice interaction, things like that. And we have batteries. It runs the suitcase for two, three hours. We don't use any network connection because when it is disconnected, it is very dangerous.

So AI suitcase always needs to prioritize the safety. And maybe I can share my last message. So, throughout my life, I learned we can make impossible possible by never giving up. When I lost my sight, I never imagined that such a life would open up for me decades later. I faced significant challenges in my life, but by not giving up, I was able to come this far. Make the impossible possible. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to today's episode. ACM ByCast is a production of the Association for Computing Machinery's Practitioner's Board, and AMIA's For Your Informatics is the production of Women in AMIA. To learn more about ACM, visit ACM.org. And to learn more about AMIA, visit AMIA.org.

For more information about this and other episodes, please visit learning.acm.org slash b-y-t-e-c-a-s-t. And for AMIA's For Your Informatics podcast, visit the news tab on amia.org.