| Description of good practice: |
The university has done more than improving physical accessibility. Mami Nakatsu, project research associate at Disability Support Office (DSO), has coordinated support for students and faculty with disabilities for 15 years.
The office has nine staff members, including two full-time faculty, she said, noting that DSO is unique in that its staff includes people with disabilities. The University of Tokyo has 180 part-time staff to support students with disabilities, but the office recruits staff when needs arise.
A student with disability entering UTokyo applies to receive support, then meets with office staff for interviews and consultations to decide on the assistance to be offered. For disabled students to fully participate in class activities, the office offers a range of services to ensure they have access to the same level and quality of information as others. For example, at the request of students who are blind or with low vision, DSO magnifies texts in textbooks and other study materials, transcribes them into Braille, and digitizes texts so they can be read out by software. Graphs are also translated into text so students can understand their content.
The office has also provided information accessibility support by placing student support staff in classes. The support staff sit alongside the student, look at the instructor’s writing on the board and whisper the content to the student in a small voice. For students with total or partial hearing loss, student supporters enter the instructor’s words into a PC, or manually take notes for them.
These academic years (2020, 2021), UTokyo moved its classes online due to the coronavirus pandemic. It means that student support staff could not provide support in the classroom. For hard-of-hearing students taking online classes, student support staff have helped instead by listening to the lectures also remotely and correcting errors in captions provided by speech recognition software.
The website of the Office presents various disabilities and guidelines for working with students with various disabilities. |
