First deaf-blind person to receive doctorate in Japan

From The Yomiuri Shimbun:

A blind and deaf associate professor at Tokyo University Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology will be granted a doctoral degree, it has been learned.

Satoshi Fukushima, 45, will become the first blind deaf person to receive a doctorate in Japan. An award ceremony will be held for him at Tokyo University's Komaba campus Wednesday.

Fukushima lost his eyesight when he was 9 years old and his hearing at 18. However, thanks to "yubi tenji," a finger-tapping system--based on six-dot braille--devised by his mother, Reiko, he passed an entrance examination for Tokyo Metropolitan University, becoming the first blind and deaf person in Japan to enter a university.

Fukushima, who studies how society should relate to people with disabilities, started
preparations for his doctoral thesis six years ago. He analyzed how he came to communicate with others via yubi tenji after years of living in a wordless world.