[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"

Keio University has accepted many students with disabilities and has supported their learning in various ways. Meanwhile, following the mandatory requirement to provide "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 how "reasonable accommodation" is provided at Keio University.

The term "@ease (at ease)" carries meanings such as "feeling secure, peace of mind, calming down, and making the mind and body comfortable." This term reflects our wish to carry out various initiatives toward realizing an environment where everyone can feel safe and calm, without being held back 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 faculties 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 sharing information across faculties and graduate schools. In particular, responses regarding 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 can respond 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 support received prior to high school is not necessarily appropriate for university support. To resolve this situation, we believe that by informing students in advance of the support content provided so far, they can use it as a reference to find the support content that fits their respective disabilities. To achieve this, we want to organize the support content provided to date into packages and discuss support based on those offerings to reach a more optimal goal.

3. Provision of Assistive Devices: With the advancement of 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 obligated to provide "reasonable accommodation," and 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 our website.

5. Support Collaboration with Faculties and Graduate Schools: Many students with disabilities are enrolled in the 10 undergraduate faculties and 14 graduate schools, and it is difficult for the "Office of Accessible Education" to handle all of them alone as an isolated entity. 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 members, course instructors, and administrative staff of the faculty or graduate school 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 hiring them as temporary employees.

As described above, the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion intends to promote support for students with disabilities in a multifaceted and proactive manner through the continued operation of this new project.