Initiatives at Doshisha University Student Diversity and Accessibility Support Office
Emiko Tsuchihashi
Chief Coordinator
Doshisha University Student Diversity and Accessibility Support Office
Introduction
At Doshisha University, we launched our support system for disabled students in May 2000, reaching our 20th anniversary in 2020. This support system has put in place a study environment which allows students with disabilities enrolled at our university to live their student lives on equal terms with other students. Moreover, we have carried out a variety of initiatives, such as courses or camps incorporating disability experiences, to enable students receiving support and staff providing support to grow autonomously as we support one another.
The support system for disabled students, with its twenty-year history, was reorganized to become the Student Diversity and Accessibility Support Office (hereinafter, “the SDA Office”) in April 2021. This organizational restructuring came about due to the need to adopt a broad perspective of a campus filled with diversity. This “perspective of a diverse campus” mentioned here refers to a way of interacting based on mutual respect for diversity, which includes not only disability but also nationality, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, culture, religion, and beliefs.
Changes in the students needing support and the coordinator role over 20 years
Looking back to the year 2000, when the support system for disabled students was launched, we never even imagined the arrival of an era which would respect all types of diversity, not only disability. At that time, the term “coordinator of support for disabled students” did not yet exist at the university, and most Japanese universities did not even have a grasp of the situation of disabled students.
As the coordinator, my role was to speak on behalf of disabled students who pleaded “I just want to study like the other students”, asking their departments and teachers to make accommodations for them. The Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities, which came into force in 2016, then created the idea that disability “is understood as being not inside the body, but rather between society and the individual”. The coordinator role switched from being a proxy communicating the rights of disabled students to study on their behalf to become a mediator in an intermediary role connecting the rights of disabled students to study, which were now protected by law. In other words, due to the passage of the law, we took on the role of “connecting students and the university in order to ensure organizational compliance”.
Moreover, students with disabilities started to express their need for support themselves, such as “I can’t write (due to an upper limb disability), so I’d like someone to take notes on my behalf”, in order to remove (or eliminate) barriers in a society constructed for the majority, rather than trying to overcome these through individual effort alone. From this time on, the rights of students who needed support to study were protected by law, and the university put in place a support system to serve as reasonable accommodation; but in 2020, we were soon faced with an unprecedented situation caused by the spread of COVID-19 infections.
Support arising from the COVID-19 pandemic
In the spring semester of 2020, the fourth year after the law came into force, all classes were moved online to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and entry to campus was restricted, so not only classes but all interactions suddenly changed to a remote format. Under these circumstances, the strong desire of disabled students to study at university and the wish of teaching, administrative, and support staff to respond to this desire were what fundamentally kept us going.
To give one example, one course was thought to be difficult for a totally blind student to take online, because classes focused on visual teaching materials. The reason was that in these classes, sighted students learned through visual materials about the movement of the earth and changes inside the earth, which even they had never seen directly. It was explained to the student in question that since this was taking place online, rather than in face-to-face classes, even if they could understand it in theory, it would probably be difficult for them to learn on an equal footing with students who could understand this visually. Their immediate response was “That’s what I expected. Even so, I still want to take this course, and so I have no intention of withdrawing from it.”
In order to respond to the blind student’s desire to learn, the teacher in charge of the course made a model of the seabed and a puzzle of the continents by hand to show the state and movements of the earth and its surface. After a process of trial and error, the teacher affixed Braille labels showing the direction of movement of the seabed and the names of the continents, adding a Braille translation of the key.
This is one example of how the diversity of our student body of roughly 30,000 people and the support possibilities born of the COVID-19 pandemic interacted, prompting us to reconsider how we thought about the possibilities for remote support.
Current support content
As I mentioned above, our university’s system was reorganized into the SDA Office in the 2021 academic year. In order to obtain the necessary and appropriate support and opportunities in leading their student lives for students with psychiatric or developmental disabilities as well as physical disabilities and for students of diverse genders, sexual orientations and gender identities, and for students to coexist with mutual respect for each other’s diverse personalities and identities, we made a conscious decision to provide support not for each type of disability, but based on the nature of the problem encountered. We interview students to find out about the situations in which they experience problems while learning and the kinds of support they need, then consider the concrete support content.
The support content at this university is as shown in Fig. 1.
Examples of support: Guaranteed access to information (computer transcription, notetaking, sign language interpreting), use of voice recognition software, subtitling of videos, supply of consumables (loose leaf paper/ pens), use of noise-cancelling earphones
Examples of support: Proofreading of text files of class materials or exam problems, enlarged copies, Braille translation, reading aloud of texts face-to-face, writing or reading on the student’s behalf, guide services (when moving around the campus), class assistance, coordination of class participation methods
Examples of support: Writing on the student’s behalf, wheelchair assistance (when moving around the campus), toileting assistance, mealtime assistance, vehicle entry through the issue of a parking permit, use of a lounge for stretching
Examples of support: Computer notetaking, writing on the student’s behalf, extended time for written exams
Examples of support: Concrete presentation of information, emphasis of important information, explicit specification of role during experiments or group work
Examples of support: Writing on the student’s behalf, redistribution of summary, presentation of important points online
Examples of support: Taking exams in a separate room, leaving and entering the room during classes (leaving online classes partway through), guide services (when moving around the campus), vehicle entry through the issue of a parking permit, use of showers on campus, preparation of a place to sit, change to presentation methods |
Fig. 1
Excerpt from the “Information pamphlet” issued by Doshisha University Student Diversity and Accessibility Support Office
https://challenged.doshisha.ac.jp/attach/page/CHALLENGED-PAGE-JA-22/162591/file/sdapan2022.pdf (Japanese only)
Moreover, due to the rapid spread of online courses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the support which had been provided face-to-face until then was carried out remotely, and students have now become able to choose remote support.
E.g.
- Face-to-face computer transcription → online computer transcription
- Face-to-face typing by an amanuensis → online typing by an amanuensis
Fig. 2 Conventional forms of support have become available during online classes, too
Furthermore, in a growing number of cases, support staff receive permission to view on-demand classes from the teacher and are provided with the data, allowing them to view these and produce subtitles, take notes, scribe, or take down points from their homes.
Conclusion
As face-to-face classes start across the university in the 2022 academic year, we are developing support for disabled students that makes the most of the benefits of both online and in-person teaching. Since taking classes online has become a possibility, some students are now requesting this as a reasonable accommodation, not due to the COVID-19 pandemic but because of their disability or an unexpected deterioration of their medical condition.
At present, in its Standards for the Establishment of Universities, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) limits the number of credits that can be obtained through online and other remote classes to a maximum of 60 of the 124 required for graduation. This limit on online classes is also an important matter internally, since it relates to the university’s diploma policy. However, recently MEXT presented an outline plan for a special system to relax the upper limit on university credits which can be obtained via online classes, with certain conditions in place, in a working group of the Central Council for Education, an advisory body. This special system may be applied from as early as the 2023 academic year.
We at this university’s SDA office, too, intend to strive to be alert to the barriers in a society erected for the benefit of the majority, and to make improvements as appropriate.
