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[Applause]
Hello everyone.
Do any of you
use glasses or contact lenses?
About half of you I guess.
You need them around, right?
Glasses were invented in Italy in the 13th century,
and brought to Japan in the 16th century.
Then they became widespread in the Meiji period.
Try to imagine the world before that.
It must have been very inconvenient
for people with bad eyesight. They probably had a hard time
reading or shopping.
Back then, there were no streetlights
and roads were bumpy, so it must have been dangerous
for people with bad eyesight
to walk at night.
I’m always thinking about something while walking,
so sometimes I trip even when it’s not dark.
I am feeling a bit nervous on stage today,
so I should try not to trip and fall.
Anyways, now glasses are cheap and mass-produced,
and everyone can get them.
People with bad eyesight can avoid
serious danger or inconvenience
and live as if they have no problem with their eyes.
Actually, there is something similar with "color" as well.
Take a look at this.
You will see that the left side and right side
are the same colors.
But this is not what it really is.
This is actually showing how people who cannot distinguish
red and green are seeing colors.
Originally, it looked like this.
So, when it is difficult to distinguish color pairs
such as red and green, pink and light blue,
or purple and violet,
it’s called "color blindness."
Have you heard of it?
Doctors or scientists use the term “color vision deficiency.”
There are actually a lot of color-blind people.
Including minor and major cases,
1 out of 20 Japanese men
and 1 out of 12 European or American men are color-blind.
It’s much less common among women.
About 1 in 300 to 500.
It is not only in Japan, Europe or the US.
Color-blind people are all over the world.
Sorry that this map is not AuthaGraph mentioned earlier.
Greenland looks too big.
Just like near-sighted people,
color-blind people sometimes experience
minor inconveniences in their everyday lives.
For example, have you seen someone in front of an elevator
trying to press a button?
For people without color blindness,
it is obvious that the button for the 8th floor is lit.
But for color-blind people, it takes a little time
to figure out which button is currently pressed.
This is one case.
Now, this tree has some red fruit,
but it's hard for color-blind people to see
because the color looks the same as the leaves.
They may not notice the fruit
when they walk under the tree.
This is a sign for a public bathroom.
For color-blind people,
colors for men and women look opposite.
You might get confused if you are in a hurry.
It’s very common.
Actually, the other day at an airport,
I almost went into the women's bathroom.
They gave me this crazy, angry stare.
I am not color-blind, so I don't know why I did that.
Now, this is a branch of cherry tomatoes.
Again, it can take a long time
to figure out which ones are ripe.
So, in order to address these issues,
I developed a technology that helps color-blind people
see and distinguish different colors.
For near-sightedness or astigmatism,
there are glasses. I wanted it to be like glasses,
so I named it “Chromatic Glass”.
It calculates colors that are hard to see
because of genes, and makes it easier to see them
using augmented reality.
You can’t put it on like glasses yet,
You can’t put it on like glasses yet,
but it works on smart phones
and you can bring it anywhere.
Let's see how it works.
In this picture, there are red flowers,
probably poppy flowers,
in a wheat field.
But for some color-blind people,
as you see, it's hard to find the flowers.
Let's use the Chromatic Glass here.
Now, you can see the flowers clearly like this.
It’s pretty easy to use.
This book has some numbers in color combinations
that color-abled people can read
but color-blind people cannot.
Let’s take a look at this with Chromatic Glass.
Please pay attention to the two circles at the bottom.
Color-blind people can't read them.
But if you use Chromatic Glass....
you can read the numbers like this.
It's easy, right?
We are limited by the bodies that we are born with.
Tall, short, good at sports, not good at sports.
Some have arm or leg disabilities.
Some are near-sighted, some are color-blind.
But we have developed technologies that help us
deal with these inconveniences.
Chromatic Glass is one of them.
I was thinking, if someone comes up with
glasses that make me look more handsome,
I would buy a dozen of them.
Well, you should get them actually.
Anyway, when I first completed Chromatic Glass,
I was not so sure
if the methodology really worked,
if it would really help people see colors.
But, right after I published the application,
I started hearing from users
all over the world.
I read all of these messages.
I'd like to share some of them with you.
“For the first time in my life, I saw the colored leaves,”
one of the users told me.
This person went to a mountain.
"I had no idea what colored leaves looked like before,
but now I see. Maples are very red."
That's what he said.
Another person said “I was able to buy clothes
of the right color”.
This person tried to buy brown clothes
and ended up getting green ones
many times.
He usually goes shopping with a friend,
but this time, he was able to get the clothes he wanted by himself.
but this time, he was able to get the clothes he wanted by himself.
Another user said “Now I can get on a bus or train with confidence”.
Route maps often have colors that are hard to distinguish,
and it takes a long time to figure them out.
But he told me that it’s much easier and convenient now.
But he told me that it’s much easier and convenient now.
Another user said,
“What I thought were black patterns
turned out to be red rust. I was surprised.”
One time I received a message that said
“Thank you for giving me colors.”
This message really moved me
and filled my eyes with tears.
I thought, “The application I made is really helping someone.
It was worth it.” I felt very very happy.
I still receive lots of "thank you" messages.
They always make me very happy.
When I made Chromatic Glass,
I also developed a technology called “Color Simulator.”
This application calculates how color-blind people
see colors, and reproduces them as they are
on the screen.
I'd like to suggest that color-abled people
use this application, when you draw,
or look at posters or signs out there.
By doing that,
you can easily test if the colors used
are easy to see for everybody.
More and more people are using these two applications.
And I am hearing more from the users.
Like I said, I read every message.
After a while, I realized that
there was something in common among these messages.
Let me share them with you.
One user said, "I am color-blind.
I've had lots of bad experiences because of this.
Some of my friends even laughed at me.
So I've been trying not to talk about it.
They did not understand even when I tried to explain.
But now, I can show them
how I’m seeing colors,
and they are beginning to understand.
I’m very happy.”
A mother messaged me, saying
“My child is color-blind.
When I found out,
I felt sorry for giving birth to her that way.
One time she was drawing with these unusual colors,
and it made me really upset. I thought I was going crazy.
But now, I have an idea
of how she sees the world.
I can understand why she drew
with those colors that time.
I'm very happy,
and a little relieved.”
You see, they are not saying “I’m happy I can see.”
They are happy because people understand
how they see or because they understand
how he or she sees.
Learning these feelings
made me happy as well.
At the same time, I felt like these people really knew
why I put so much effort into developing this technology
and sharing it for free. They were strangers to me,
but they really knew what I was trying to do.
People see colors with their brain.
You can't cut open people’s heads,
so you don’t know how other people are seeing colors.
When color blindness was not well understood,
there were lots of misunderstandings
and prejudice.
But now that we understand it better,
we know what is different
and we can pay attention where needed.
We have learned more
and discovered that
color-blind people are good at distinguishing
different shades of blue,
finding insects in a forest,
or finding fish in water.
We are starting to learn the advantages
that color-blind people have.
We fear what we can’t see
or what we can’t understand.
We fear ghosts, we fear radioactive materials,
because we can’t see them
and don’t really know
what they will do to us.
This ghost is not exactly scary, huh?
The reasons why the mother was worried
or the friends were laughing, are probably related to this.
Countries are fighting each other
maybe because they don’t know
what the other party is like,
what they are thinking and feeling.
My users taught me these things.
And I started to realize that
what I have been making might be
something like a translation machine
between color-abled people and color-blind people.
between color-abled people and color-blind people.
The Chromatic Color Simulator is for color-abled people
to understand color-blind people.
The Chromatic Glass is for color-blind people
to understand color-abled people.
They are like an English-Japanese dictionary
and a Japanese-English dictionary.
I made these applications to help people deal with inconveniences
they have with their bodies.
But they actually created
mutual understanding between people.
And now I believe that
this kind of contribution is one of the things
that technology should aim for.
This thought encouraged me to develop
an application called “Brighter and Bigger.”
This application helps people with far-sightedness or cataracts,
This application helps people with far-sightedness or cataracts,
who cannot read small characters.
It helps them with reading.
These three applications are all free of charge,
and used all over the world by over a hundred thousand people.
My next plan is to develop technologies
related to ears and sound.
My father is 82 years old
and he has difficulty hearing, so I need to talk to him very loudly.
There are hearing-aids that you can put in your ear,
but he doesn’t like to use them,
because the sound quality is bad.
So I want to make an incredible hearing aid
that minimizes noise and clarifies voices when talking to people,
and catches the singing of insects on a quiet night in the fall,
and makes it possible to listen to the great sound of music.
and makes it possible to listen to the great sound of music.
My father loves classical music,
but recently he hasn't been listening to it at all.
So I want to invite him to a concert
and enjoy Mozart with him.
This is my next goal.
Technology connects people’s feelings.
Thank you.
(Applause)