T3: Toys for Everyone

Today, toy manufacturers have become "greener" and adopted environmental-friendly processes and used recyclable materials. While organisations may have started to care for our mother Earth, have they done the same for society



Barrier Free Toys

Tomicas are considered Barrier Free toys in Japan, in that vision- or hearing-impaired children can enjoy sharing and playing with others. This stems from the concept of “Toys that anyone can enjoy” and instead of creating toys exclusively for these children, Tomy adopted measures such as changing the shape of labels and adding a small bump near the switch to distinguish between “on” from “off” etc. On a personal note, I firmly support the concept where Toys should be enjoyed by everyone, so a kudos to TakaraTomy

To elaborate further, there is even a Barrier Free Toys Promotion Task Force in Japan. Later, the Accessible Design Foundation of Japan was established with the aim of going beyond toys to enable the less fortunate to use ordinary products and to function freely in society with fewer limitations or physical barriers.


Japan Toy Association

The Japan Toy Association (JTA) had promoted “Universal-use toys” for which certain “consideration is given” which enable deaf or blind children to play with those toys at ease. The Association approves about 50 items of “Universal-use toys” every year. An example is like the protruding portion on the “5” key of the touch-tone.

The raise awareness, the Association publishes and distributes 15,000 brochures of “Universal-use toys” to schools for blind children, toy specialist shops and retailers. The JTA is willing to promote "Universal-use toys" until such time when people take it for granted and not view it as a special matter.


(Dog Logo: Based on a Labrador Retriever)

By such devices or designs, visually handicapped children are able to play with toys. Toys with “consideration” for a vision impaired person are called “Seimou-kyoyu Gangu” and a “Seeing-eye Dog Mark” logo is displayed. For a hearing impaired person the logo carrying the “Rabbit Mark” is similarly shown on the package.

(Article: TakaraTomy)