[Feature: Toward a Campus of Mutual Support] Hideyuki Nakamine: On the Establishment of the Office of Accessible Education and the Launch of the @ease Project

2023/03/07

Keio University has accepted many students with disabilities and has supported their learning in various ways. Meanwhile, following the mandatory provision of "reasonable accommodation" due to legal amendments, the "Office of Accessible Education" was established at the Hiyoshi Campus in November 2022. Simultaneously, a new framework was launched to support students with disabilities enrolled in all undergraduate and graduate schools. This initiative is named the "@ease Project." By introducing this project here, I hope to convey an image of the "provision of reasonable accommodation" at Keio University.

The term "@ease (at ease)" carries meanings such as "feeling safe, at peace, calm, and making the mind and body comfortable." We have chosen this term with the hope of carrying out various initiatives to realize an environment where everyone can feel safe and calm, without being weighed down by the rigid image often associated with the phrase "support for students with disabilities."

Now, I would like to introduce the six initiatives of the "@ease Project" in order.

1. Portfolio Management: Keio University has 10 undergraduate and 14 graduate schools, with students with disabilities studying in each. However, because the staff in charge of each department differ, there are inevitable limits to information sharing across undergraduate and graduate schools. In particular, responses to students with disabilities, which involve highly sensitive personal information, have basically remained as information closed within the relevant department. With the establishment of the "Office of Accessible Education," it has become possible to manage responses to students with disabilities in a unified manner through "portfolios" and accumulate that expertise. We believe this will allow us to build an environment that responds smoothly to the support of students with disabilities.

2. Development of Support Packages for Students with Disabilities: Support for students with disabilities begins when a student requesting support submits a "Reasonable Accommodation Application Form." However, there are significant differences in styles between learning in high school and learning in university, and there are situations where it cannot be said that the support received before high school is necessarily appropriate for support at the university level. To resolve this situation, we believe that by informing students in advance of the types of support provided so far, they can use it as a reference to find the support content that fits their respective disabilities. To achieve this, we intend to organize previous support content into packages and discuss support based on those packages to reach a more optimal goal.

3. Provision of Assistive Devices: With the progress of science and technology such as voice recognition, various devices to support students with disabilities are appearing daily. On the other hand, these devices are often very expensive. Regarding this point, the "Office of Accessible Education" intends to manage assistive devices centrally to realize effective use of resources and smooth provision.

4. Provision of E-learning Content: Universities are mandated to provide "reasonable accommodation," but it is more important than anything else that all members of the organization correctly understand this concept. Toward this understanding, we will proceed with initiatives to develop e-learning content and provide it through the website.

5. Support Collaboration with Undergraduate and Graduate Schools: Many students with disabilities are enrolled in the 10 undergraduate and 14 graduate schools, and it is difficult for the "Office of Accessible Education" to handle all of them alone in isolation. Learning in each department progresses only with the understanding of that department, and it is most important to build a system where the Academic Advisory Board faculty, subject instructors, and administrative staff of the undergraduate/graduate schools acting as the contact point work together to provide support. By having the "Office of Accessible Education" join this circle of support, we want to build a system that supports the "provision of reasonable accommodation."

6. Operation of "@ease supporters": For the support of students with disabilities, we believe it is most important that not only faculty and staff but also fellow students do not remain indifferent and instead join the circle of support together. In the "@ease Project," we name the students who provide actual support "@ease supporters" and intend to provide the necessary support by employing them as temporary staff.

As described above, the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion intends to proactively and multi-facetedly advance support for students with disabilities through the continuous operation of this new project.