Introduction

Photograph of President
Dr. Yoshikazu Seki, President.

The sensory substitution is a action to substitute the surviving sense for the sensory function lost by impairment. Research and development of sensory substitution methods is very important to assist the persons with sensory disabilities, such as the visual, hearing, and multiple impairment. The Association of Sensory Substitution, Japan (ASSJ) was established in 1975. We are leading the frontier of studies concerning with the sensory substitution for about 30 years. We are proud of being the pioneer of the sensory substitution in Japan.

Mission

Mission of ASSJ is to develop and diffuse the sensory substitution and concerned field for the people with sensory impairment, especially development of the assistive device, equipment of the environment, education, rehabilitation, or medicine, engineering, psychology, pedagogy that are base of those, through study and discussion.

Activety

In order to accomplish the mission, we have been holding the Sensory Substitution Symposium in every December at Tokyo since 1975. The Sensory Substitution Symposium is a conference to discuss about the sensory substitution, visual assistance, auditory assistance, deaf-blind education, assistive technology for aged people, and basic fields of those. About over 100 participants concerned with the sensory disabilities attend, and there are about 30 general lectures and one or two special lectures. General language is Japanese, but English presentation will be welcome.

Publishing

In every year, we are publishing the Proceedings of the Sensory Substitution Symposium. Unfortunately, the text bodies of almost all the papers are written in Japanese. However, some of the papers provide English title, author names, and abstract. Of course full-English paper is welcome. If you plan to give a lecture to our symposium, you may write your paper in English.





Award

In order to promote the sensory substitution research in Japan, we are awarding Sensory Substitution Research Incentive Award to the student who made the best presentation in the Sensory Substitution Symposium.