The population of hearing impaired people in Japan is about four million. The means of communication available to the them are mainly sign language, writing, and reading lips. 2.8 million Japanese hearing impaired people use the facsimile as a means of remote communication, and this number continues to grow. At the same time, the evolution of online personal computers and other wireless devices have resulted in the ability to communicate in text, graphics, and video. These are more convenient, especially for hearing impaired people, as the means of remote communication. We researched the evolution of such communications technologies and devices from the viewpoint of hearing impaired people and predicted some potential problems with the future communication environment integrating voice, text, and video as digital data. In this environment, the hearing population is not conscious of the difficulties of physically challenged people. We propose that the solutions effective in compensating for these problem will also provide increased convenience for the general population as a whole.
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