[originaltext]Moderator: Hello, everyone! It’s a great pleasure for me to s

Moderator:
    Hello, everyone! It’s a great pleasure for me to say that Chieko Asakawa will be our keynote speaker today. Chieko Asakawa, as a brilliant IBM research scientist, seeks to improve the lives of the visually impaired by ensuring they have equal access to technology and innovation and challenging traditional thinking about how those with special needs use technology. She is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. She also teaches at Tsukuba Engineering College, focusing on human interface issues. Now let’s welcome Ms. Asakawa.
Chieko Asakawa:
    Thanks for the introduction. Hi, everyone. You might think there are many things that I can’t do because I cannot see. That’s largely true. Actually, I just needed to have a bit of help to come up to the stage.
    But there is also a lot that I can do. This is me rock climbing for the first time. Actually, I love sports and I can play many sports, like swimming, skiing, skating, scuba diving, running and so on. But there is one limitation: somebody needs to help me. I want to be independent.
    I lost my sight at the age of 14 in a swimming pool accident. I was an active, independent teenager, and suddenly I became blind. The hardest thing for me was losing my independence. Things that until then seemed simple became almost impossible to do alone. For example, one of my challenges was text-books. Back then, there were no personal computers, no Internet, no smartphones. So I had to ask one of my two brothers to read me textbooks, and I had to create my own books in Braille. Can you imagine? Of course, my brothers were not happy about it, and later, I noticed they were not there whenever I needed them. I think they tried to stay away from me. I don’t blame them. I really wanted to be freed from relying on someone. That became my strong desire to ignite innovation.
    Jump ahead to the mid-1980s. I got to know cutting-edge technologies and I thought to myself, how come there is no computer technology to create books in Braille? These amazing technologies must be able to also help people with limitations like myself. That’s the moment my innovation journey began.
    I started developing digital book technologies, such as a digital Braille editor, digital Braille dictionary and a digital Braille library network. Today, every student who is visually impaired can read text-books, by using personal computers and mobile devices, in Braille or in voice. This may not surprise you, since everyone now has digital books in their tablets in 2015. But Braille went digital many years before digital books, already in the late 1980s, almost 30 years ago. Strong and specific needs of the blind people made this opportunity to create digital books way back then. And this is actually not the first time this happened, because history shows us accessibility ignites innovation. The telephone was invented while developing a communication tool for hearing impaired people. Some keyboards were also invented to help people with disabilities.
16. According to the introduction, what does Chieko Asakawa seek to?
17. Which sport has not been mentioned by Chieko Asakawa?
18. What does Chieko Asakawa say about her lost of sight?
19. What has Chieko Asakawa developed?