Mikio Yamamoto
Director, Accessibility Center, Hiroshima University

Introduction

At Hiroshima University, we carry out reasonable accommodation, adjustment, and support for students with disabilities (hereinafter, “disabled students”), with a core philosophy of “securing a high-quality education for all students” and “guaranteeing fairness of evaluation”. Since university education and its study environment were not originally designed with diverse students, including disabled students, in mind – though I should add the caveat “at the present moment” – accommodation, adjustment, and support around accessibility are needed in order to achieve the core philosophical tenets above.

In recent years, the support needs of disabled students have continued to diversify and, at the same time, to increase in both qualitative and quantitative terms. According to a survey of the situation by the Japan Student Services Organization in the 2020 academic year , the number of disabled students receiving support enrolled at higher education institutions nationwide  was 18,777 (0.58% of total students), and this figure has risen steadily since the survey began in 2006 . If we break this down by type of disability, the numbers of disabled students receiving support for vision, hearing, speech, or physical impairments are not changing significantly, but support needs for developmental disabilities, psychiatric disorders, or overall poor health are showing a marked and ongoing increase. Hereinafter, this article will refer to support needs for vision, hearing, speech, or physical impairments as “conventional needs”, and to support needs for developmental disabilities, psychiatric disorders, or poor health as “latent needs”.

If Hiroshima University students have a physical or other disability that may give rise to a social barrier when studying, they can submit a support application to their department. At Hiroshima University, too, the number of students making support applications for “conventional needs” is stable at around 20 per year. On the other hand, the number of applications for “latent needs” has grown drastically over the last decade, from 5 to 120 (including overlaps). This rise is similar to the national trend, but the growth in support applications for developmental disabilities and psychiatric disorders has been particularly sudden at Hiroshima University.

Hiroshima University’s support structure

At Hiroshima University, regulations on disabled student support were laid down in 1998, stating that the main responsibility to provide support lay with the student’s department. For the meeting body, there is an Accessibility Center Committee made up of support committee members representing each department (undergraduate and graduate) and specialist committee members (experts). In addition, in each department there is a support committee member (an academic) elected from each program (equivalent to a course of study), who works to grasp and make adjustments to the study support carried out within the program.

The Accessibility Center (hereinafter, “the Centre”), was set up as a university-wide organization supporting the departments, which have the main responsibility to provide study support, and has nine dedicated teaching and administrative staff. In addition to support work such as assessments, issuing of documents, advice, proposals, coordination, and the provision of resources related to study support, it carries out accessibility education such as the Accessibility Leaders Development Program (ALP)  and collaborative projects such as the UE-Net  project.

Hiroshima University’s support system and support contents

The student themself makes a support application to their department. Students with conventional needs almost always make a support application when they enter the university, but for latent needs, in the majority of cases the student is recommended to make a support application by a teacher or doctor involved when the difficulty with taking classes or student life becomes apparent.

Students are asked to submit (1) documentary evidence, such as a diagnosis, (2) a support application form, (3) an assessment report when making a support application. The Center draws up (2) and (3), based on the documentary evidence and an interview with the student. Support applications need to be renewed each year and, if their symptoms have changed, the student is asked to submit documentary evidence during the annual renewal. Since the application form is submitted once the Center’s assessment has been completed, almost all support applications are accepted, unless there is something lacking in the documents, and support begins swiftly.

Around half of the students who make support applications send “accommodation request forms” to their teachers and administrative staff. When they initially apply for support, almost all students send accommodation request forms, but as they progress through their courses, it becomes easier for them to obtain understanding and accommodation from those around them, and the students themselves become familiar with how to handle their situations, so there is a tendency for fewer accommodation request forms to be sent. “Accommodation request forms” are drawn up by the Center with the agreement of the individual, and are sent electronically by the Center to the teaching and administrative staff concerned in the joint names of three parties: (1) departmental support committee members (2) program support staff, and (3) Center support committee members.

The teachers and administrative staff concerned make various accommodations, adjustments, and advice, referring to the contents of the accommodation request form. When it is difficult for these staff alone to respond to the contents, the Center provides resources such as support equipment or staff. Accommodations made by the teachers and administrative staff concerned include “communication of important matters in writing”, “accommodations regarding instruction, explanations, and communication”, “adjustments or accommodations regarding speaking out or presentations”, “adjustment and advice regarding time or volume, such as breaking things down into small steps (reading and writing, tasks, study, topics, assignments, etc.)”, “accommodations regarding teaching and other materials (readability, distribution methods, etc.)”, “workload reduction (physical condition, anxiety, hypersensitivity, etc.)”, “accommodations with seating or entering and leaving the room”, “use of support equipment or collaboration with support staff”, and so on. With latent needs, in particular, a lot tends to depend on accommodation and adjustments by the teachers and administrative staff concerned. Moreover, since there are limits on the adjustments which can be made to courses which cannot be replaced, such as a research project required in order to graduate or compulsory classes, there are cases in which the collaboration of and special measures by the program or department are necessary.

Support provided by the Center includes “regular interviews (advice on task management, information management, taking courses, study, student life, etc.)”, “support with refining teaching materials (Braille, reading aloud, putting into electronic format, putting into text format, subtitling, etc.”, “information support” (real-time remote transcription, amanuensis for notes, etc.), “arranging support equipment”, “support for self-study or other study, arranging student mentors”, “support with transition into employment or life skills (daily life skills, social skills) in collaboration with specialist agencies”, and so on.

The current state of support, and issues

One of the distinctive features of conventional needs are their low absolute numbers, meaning that the effect of fluctuations in support needs is large. Hiroshima University is relatively big, with 15,000 students, so it can be thought that it would be less affected by fluctuations; nevertheless, there are years when there is no need for Braille or assistance with personal tasks, and years when the need for real-time transcription suddenly increases. Constructing and maintaining a support structure which can respond in a stable way to highly fluctuating support needs is surely no easy task for most universities.

At Hiroshima University, we have a supporter internship system employing students who have obtained the Accessibility Leader Qualification 1, and a stable supply of supporters proficient in diversity response and support skills, allowing us to respond flexibly to widely-fluctuating conventional needs. However, in order to respond to the growth in the need for support with academic skills (scholarship skills required in the student’s major field) and life skills which have accompanied the growth in latent needs in recent years, we are running a “student mentor” scheme employing students proficient in academic skills, regardless of support skills. We are working together with specialist agencies on life skills support and support with the transition into employment, but this collaborative support is still limited: we are only able to support a few students each year.

Support applications by international students are also growing, and how to respond to them is an issue. With international students, linguistic and cultural issues are also interposed, and it is possible that support needs may remain undetected. We need to think of the possibility that these may suddenly increase, like the latent needs. Since the conventional support structures and systems include an assumption that students are Japanese, we are moving to overhaul them in order to respond to students of diverse nationalities.

Since study support by universities is provided on campus in principle, there are cases in which off-campus support becomes a problem. The strengthening of collaboration with community resources and with welfare and medical services is one issue.

The nature of taking classes online as an accommodation is another issue. Cases of students requesting to take classes online for reasons such as anxiety symptoms, sleep disorders, home quarantine, hospitalization, and so on are increasing. At present, we are considering this as a provisional or limited measure. While there are cases in which taking classes online improves the study circumstances, risks are involved if doing so is normalized, and so we need to draw up guidelines.

Initiatives going forward

At Hiroshima University, we are transitioning from “special support” to “the everyday environment”, aiming for “the commodification of reasonable and educational accommodation”. We are working on “remote provision and automation of support” through the proactive introduction of ICT and AI, “improved accessibility literacy” through the ALP project, and “the promotion of resource sharing” through the UE-Net project and others.

As the support structure and support system mature, and as provision of the basic environment moves ahead, the number of disabled students receiving support normally ought to start to fall, but we are not yet seeing any signs of this nationwide. It can be thought that when support is closed off within an individual university, initiatives are prone to fragment, and extreme burdens easily arise. I think that it is crucial not to keep initiatives limited to disabled student support or within the university, but to design university education and study environments which envision study by more diverse students.