[1][3] She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature at Otemon Gakuin University in Osaka in 1982, followed by a two-year computer programming course designed for the visually impaired; students used Optacons to translate print to tactile sensation.

[10] Currently, Asakawa has finished working on a lightweight suitcase robot helping blind people navigate through complicated terrain.

[13][14] She was a keynote speaker at the Fourth International Conference on Software Development for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAIE 2012).

[4] A paper she wrote in 1998 with Takashi Itoh describing their work on web user interfaces for blind people was the winner of the 2013 ACM SIGACCESS Impact Award.

[15] In 2017, she was elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Engineering[16] for developing technologies for the visually impaired to access digital information.