Creating a Campus Where Everyone Can Feel at Ease! The Work of @ease supporters (Part 1)
2023/11/30
The "@ease Project," which began in the fall semester of 2022, is one of our initiatives to support students, faculty, and staff with disabilities. A key feature of this project is the creation of a tailored support system through the collaboration and cooperation of various departments involved with the individual. This approach helps prevent the isolation of individuals with disabilities and emphasizes that all related departments should take ownership and engage directly with them.
Playing a major role in this project are the undergraduate and graduate students hired as @ease supporters through a biannual public recruitment process (in summer and spring). Once selected, these supporters work in close collaboration with coordinators from the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which oversees the project, and the Office of Accessible Education to assist people with disabilities on all Keio University campuses. @ease supporters are not volunteers in the traditional sense; they receive a stipulated remuneration.
"The first recruitment drive for @ease supporters in the summer of 2021 attracted far more applicants than we ever imagined," says Yumiko Shimada, a coordinator at the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. "It made me realize just how many students had been waiting for a project like this," she says.
Kenta Shobu (second-year master's student, Graduate School of Science and Technology) is one of the first-generation @ease supporters who has been active since 2021. While conducting research on molecular simulations in graduate school, he provides assistance, including helping a university staff member in a wheelchair, at Yagami Campus.
"I assist with mobility for lunch shopping, and then we eat together. In my elementary school days, I had friends in my class with physical or developmental disabilities, so supporting people like them isn't something special for me. If I see someone in trouble on the street, I naturally offer a hand... For me, my activities as an @ease supporter are an extension of that," says Shobu.
From left: Coordinator Yumiko Shimada; supporters Aoi Yoshizawa (third-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies) and Yuma Morisaki (first-year student, Faculty of Letters); Yagami Campus staff member Fumihiko Chimura; and Kenta Shobu (second-year master's student, Graduate School of Science and Technology).
Personal Growth Through the Awareness Gained from Providing Support
In addition to mobility assistance for wheelchair users, @ease supporters also provide real-time captioning (PC take) to transcribe lecture audio for students with hearing difficulties. Furthermore, as part of information accessibility (supporting individuals with hearing or visual impairments to obtain necessary information), the roles of @ease supporters also include digitizing course materials and adding subtitles to live streams of university ceremonies and events.
"Through activities like training and providing assistance, I've come to realize that consideration for each individual is what's crucial for everyone to have equal access to educational opportunities," says Shobu, reflecting on his past year of activities. "It may seem obvious, but not everyone needs the same support. Identifying what each person requires is what leads to 'equality' in the truest sense," he says.
Aoi Yoshizawa (third-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies) experienced supporting people with disabilities in a class during his sophomore year. This experience led him to apply to be an @ease supporter, as he felt that "interacting with people with disabilities brings new awareness and allows me to grow as a person." While providing mobility assistance to a student with visual impairments at SFC, he says he "was initially a bit guarded (around people with disabilities), but through training and interacting with many people, I learned to engage with them not as 'a person with a disability' but as 'an individual.'"
Students selected as @ease supporters participate in the Universal Manner Certification, note-taking and real-time captioning workshops, and other training sessions necessary for support, acquiring the required practical skills and mindset to provide safe and appropriate assistance. Yoshizawa also participates in activities with an off-campus organization aiming to create an inclusive society free from discrimination and prejudice, and he told us he hopes to eventually connect these experiences to his research in his faculty.
Working Together to Create a Campus Where Everyone Can Feel "at Ease"
Yuma Morisaki (first-year student, Faculty of Letters) has been a wheelchair user since high school and has been accompanied by @ease supporters for mobility on campus since entering university.
"I was impressed when a supporter said to me, 'Since we have some time today, shall we go check out the classrooms you'll be using in the future?' and then showed me around classrooms I hadn't been to yet. It really put me at ease (as I was about to start my university life)."
"I just really wanted to try it, so I asked the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, 'Can I do it too?' They told me, 'Of course,' which made me so happy that I applied right away and was hired as an @ease supporter," says Morisaki.
According to Coordinator Shimada, "@ease" means "to feel secure," "to feel relaxed," or "to be calm." "Together with the students, we want to build a campus environment where everyone can feel secure and at ease. We will continue to enhance the project's structure to fully meet the motivation and expectations of our supporters," says Shimada.
In " Part 2 ," we will have a discussion with Ms. Shimada, the three supporters we interviewed, and Yagami Campus staff member Fumihiko Chimura, who receives assistance from the supporters, about the present and future of the @ease Project.
*Affiliations and academic years are as of the time of publication.