Japan · 日本 · Open market · Operating partnership

The court said 100%. The Diet wrote the law.

Access on this page: Signed: Japanese Sign Language — pending How this page is tested

This page in sign language

Signed end to end by a Deaf creator, credited by name. International Sign on the global site; your national sign language on your country page.

Japanese Sign Language Captions + transcript ship with the video.

On 21 January 2025 the Osaka High Court ruled that a Deaf girl's lost future was worth 100 per cent of an average child's — not the 85 the district court had allowed. Five months later, in June 2025, the Diet passed Japan's first national sign language act, unanimously, after all 1,741 municipal councils had backed it.

And since 1 April 2024 every private business in Japan carries a duty of reasonable accommodation. The 15% was never her deficit. It was the system's own account of how often it fails Deaf people — and almost no business can meet the new duty in JSL.

Open the conversation Skip to the partnership

Video pending

Global partner video — spoken, captioned, and signed.

JSL Captions + transcript ship with the video. Read this instead

The scale

A duty now sits on every desk in Japan.

Japan's sign language is JSL — 日本手話, a full language with its own grammar, recognised by ordinance in dozens of prefectures and municipalities.

Millions of Japanese live with hearing loss — and the number grows with the world's oldest population. Millions more are blind or low-vision, counted separately. Seeds: MHLW statistics; JFD figures.

2024 Reasonable accommodation became mandatory for private businesses, not only government. Every company in Japan now carries the duty; most have no way to meet it in JSL. Seed: revised Elimination of Disability Discrimination Act.

Dozens of ordinances Prefectures and cities across Japan have passed their own sign-language ordinances — the appetite for local action is already proven. Seed: JFD ordinance tracker.

Why captions alone don't meet the duty → Why Sign Language

The correction

Japan corrected the math. Delivery is next.

2018 Aiyuka is killed; her family begins their fight.
2023 Osaka District Court: 85%. The gap, priced in yen.
2024 Reasonable accommodation becomes mandatory for every private business.
2025 Osaka High Court: 100%. A first for Japan.

Roughly twice the rate In the 2011 disaster, with warnings carried by sirens and loudspeakers, disabled residents died at about twice the rate of the general population. Access is not a courtesy here; it is survival infrastructure. Seed: 2011 mortality analyses.

The court refused the gap.
Now someone has to close it.

What closing the gap looks like

We've seen the third act.

Where we work, Deaf and blind creators are paid to produce sign language, captions and audio description; city councils write accessibility into local law with ally at the table — a cinema-access ordinance is past first reading; Deaf residents of Bohol have been trialing the platform in their own province; and in Singapore we ran trials with the Lighthouse and the Singapore Association for the Deaf.

For cinema — in a country that loves its cinema — our patent-pending technology puts the film in the moviegoer's glasses: synchronised sign language, captions or audio description, with the screen untouched for every other seat.

Your market

Now imagine the duty actually met.

A reception desk — any company, anywhere — that answers in JSL on demand.

A Tokyo or Osaka cinema where a Deaf family just buys tickets.

Prefectural ordinances with a delivery mechanism at last — made by Deaf Japanese, paid for their work.

47 prefectures, dozens already committed by ordinance, and — since 2024 — every private business in the country under the accommodation duty. Every sign language is a market someone organises first: whoever organises JSL, in the world's third-largest economy, keeps it.

The builder

This story needs its Japanese builder.

We bring

The platform, the API, and the creator playbook
The compliance-to-comprehension playbook, proven city by city
The brand, training, and the patent-pending cinema line

You bring

Standing in Japan — exhibition, media, government, corporate services, or the Deaf community
Operating capacity and relationships, prefecture by prefecture
Market investment, and the ambition to deliver the 100% the High Court promised

A licensed market operation, built with the local community — terms discussed directly. Deaf-led organisations and entrepreneurs are explicitly welcome: the community that changed the court's arithmetic may be exactly who should build the delivery.

More ways in

Sponsor the access

A brand underwrites JSL content or a service line — and meets the 2024 duty publicly, before its competitors do.

Distribute & integrate

Broadcasters, streamers, railways and corporates under the accommodation duty carry the access through one API.

Host the first

A prefecture with a sign-language ordinance, or a cinema chain, stages Japan's first fully signed-and-described screening day.

Invest

Back the Japanese operation alongside an operator — or introduce us to the one who should run it. Investors

Next step

A family taught Japan that a Deaf child is worth 100%. Delivering it is the business.

Write to us — form, email, or a signed or spoken video message. The process: intro call → NDA → the Japan market dossier → terms.

Are you operating in Japan today?: Not yet. That is the point of this page.
What does a partnership include?: The platform, the playbook, the brand, and our team beside yours — under a licensed market structure whose terms we discuss directly.
We're a company under the 2024 accommodation duty — can you serve us directly?: Yes — that is the Platform page. Meeting the duty doesn't wait for a market partner.