From an Interview Survey of Visually Disabled and Deaf Persons in the Areas Stricken by the Niigata-Chuetsu Earthquake
September 2005
When a disaster occurs, “disaster-related Information” that tells the cause and size of the disaster and necessity of evacuation is crucial to save sufferer's lives, but actual disasters naturally accompany a number of communication problems due to disruption of lifelines. For people with seeing or hearing difficulties who need certain supports to acquire information in image, text, or voice forms, obtaining “disaster-related Information” is much more difficult.
The report features a survey result of interviews targeting people with seeing or hearing disabilities after the Niigata-Chuetsu Earthquake occurred on 23 October 2004. The author interviewed twenty people in total on their behaviors moment by moment after the first quake hit the area to study types of communication problems for disabled people and what kind of efforts or devices would enable information to be shared with them.
The interviews revealed that communications were lost immediately after the tremor, means of gathering information was divided for the first two days after the earthquake, evacuation centers proved to be “unapproachable place” for challenged people, congestion control in mobile networks worked well and mobile text messages were significantly utilized by hearing-impaired people, and disabled people chose different types of new media depending on the situation.
In the efforts to accurately convey disaster-related information to disable people, “senders” of information must recognize the types of actual impediments to transmitting information to them as well as how information flow is related to the rise of new media.