@@The purpose of this symposium is written by AOKI Shintaro (Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University (GSCEFS)) and YASUDA Masayuki (GSCEFS). Normally, graduate students and scholars are invited for academic symposiums, but they invite some students who are/were undergraduate to participate in this symposium as symposists. They also invite people with disabilities other than physical or visual ones because they or their friends have such disabilities, and quite many studies have been conducted on people with those disabilities, including their own researches, such as AOKI's editoring Techniques of Support for Students with Visual Disabilities. Therefore, they believe it would be better to focus on different kind of disabilities in this symposium. I hope this symposium will be meaningful one to all the people involved. Here, let me introduce how we have been involved in this academic topic, and why we have to get involved.
@@There are at least 10 students with disabilities in my workplace, Graduate School of Core Ethics & Frontier Sciences at Ritsumeikan University. Six students have visual disorders, and three use wheelchairs. We used to have four students in wheelchairs but unfortunately Ms. TAKEBAYASHI Yayoi passed away at the end of June due to cancer. The number of students with mental disorder can differ according to how you define them, but at least one student has an "identification booklet". There must be several students with so-called developmental disorders, although it depends on how you define this term. I expect we will have more graduate students like these, so at first we have to consider how to respond to such students. Some students come to my graduate school to study this topic as their main research theme, like YASUDA Masayuki's reporting "Challenges of Support of Disabled Students in Higher Education Mainly by Student Volunteers: Focusing on Support of Disabled Students at Nihon Fukushi University" in this symposium.
@@Quite many of our other graduate students have variety of disabilities, or "the invloved persons" of such disabilities. This unique situation led us to applying for the Global COE Program under the name of "Ars Vivendi: Forms of Human Life and Survival" in 2007. Luckily, our proposal was adopted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Technology (MEXT) in Japan, which made us much busier. The COE program consists of three parts: I. Accumulation and Thinking, II. Reorganization of Studies, and III. Cooperation and Construction. The part II. has three sections, 1. Educational Research Organizations, 2. Assistance of Technology Development and 3. Ethics of Study and Technology. The detail is described at Solicitation of the plan for establishing the COE.
@@However, the budget of this COE is limited. It is far from enough to conduct our studies properly. So we also applied for the MEXT's Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research: Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Research under a Proposed Research Project) under the title of "Communication under Different Bodies: Structures and Thoughts toward Actual Application" (in Japanese). It was adopted by MEXT, and we have been conducting studies using this grant from FY 2008 to FY 2010. The project consists of I. Structures of Communication, and II. Thoughts of Body and Machines. Part I. consists of 1. Mainly For People with Visual Disorders, 2. Mainly For People with Auditory Disorders, and 3. Mainly For People with Immovable Bodies.
@@Concerning Section 1, we have students with visual disorders. Presentations are made at this symposium under the title of "Cost of Making Text Database of Books" by UEMURA Kaname, YAMAGUCHI Maki, SAKURAI Satoshi and KASHIMA Moeko. Moreover, the reseach report I have mentioned above, Techniques of Support for Students with Visual Disability, is also available, too. In addition, MATSUBARA Yoko, our COE member and a professor of our graduate school GSCEFS, chaired the study group (with ISHIKAWA Jun (Director of Japan Society for Disability Studies) and TATEIWA Shin'ya as participants), and a report called Study Report on Distribution of Digital Contents of Books is published. (http://www.fmmc.or.jp/shoseki/090818/sho090818.html (Japanese)). We plan to establish "the structures toward the actual application" during our study period.
@@Concerning Section 2., we do not have students with auditory disorders now. However, we had a chance to know about a voice-recognition software "AmiVoice" (http://www.advanced-media.co.jp/index.html). We purchased the software and have been trying how we can utilize it since then. Moreover, some graduate students have been conducting studies on this topic. In this symposium, SAKAMOTO Norihito, SATO Hiroko and WATANABE Aiko present a report on "Consideration on Information Access of People with Hearing Difficulties and Sign Language Interpret: Field Survey of Three Local Governments", and SAKURAI Satoshi, KASHIMA Moeko and IKEDA Masahiro present a report on "Framework for Security of the Right to Study Using the Voice-recognition Software". In this symposium, we plan to convert voice into text using AmiVoice - although it has not been so successful -, together with sign-language interpretation and summary scribe with computers. If they work fine, we hope to have your comments and opinions about our trial.
@@Concerning Section 3., we have conducted studies on people with immovable bodies such as ALS, and also have been involved in support for patients with ALS. In this symposium, NISHIDA Miki presents a report on "Challenges toward a Single Life at Home for Progressive Severely Disabled People who Need Medical Care", and HASEGAWA Yui presents a report on "Examination of Cases of the Support System for Severely Disabled People who Live at Home", and YAMAMOTO Shinsuke presents a report on "The Actual Condition and Challenges of Severely Disabled People who Live at Home by themselves", and ITO Kayoko, KAWAGUCHI Yumiko, KAWASHIMA Koichiro and NOZAKI Yasunobu present a report on "ALS: Affirmation of Ars Vivendi that Precedes People's Acceptance", and OYAMA Ryoko, ITO Kayoko, KAWAHARA Hitoshi, TAKASAKA Shizuko, HAYASHI Noriko and TANAKA Tamaki present a report on "Examination of the Way of Support of Regional Relocation of Severely Disabled People under Long-term Care: Focusing on Patients with Muscular Dystrophy", and SATO Hiroko, NOZAKI Yasunobu and KAWAGUCHI Yumiko present a report on "Comprehensive Support of Severely Disabled People etc.: Comparison between Individual System and Comprehensive System". Some studies focus on how to communicate with patients who have no voice and very limited body movement. So HAN Sung-Min, TENBATA Daisuke and KAWAGUCHI Yumiko present a report on "Infomation Communication and Classification of Disabilities".
@@As you can see, our studies focus more on information related issues. We will continue our studies on this issue because it is one of the important aspects. However, support of disabled students should cover more than support on information access. The problems in supporting students with disabilities may not be solved by just providing information access. It does not mean that students with disabilities can study or conduct research only if they receive such "environment". When we talk about information, just converting information into accessible form (such as text data or braille) may not be satisfactory in some situations. We focus on this issue in II. The Thoughts of Body and Machines of our Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research.
@@It must be difficult to cover things specified above in this symposium with limited amount of time. Yet I believe it is meaningful if audience can learn the actual situation and problems from various participants and recognize various problems, too. I am happy if this symposium provides such opportunities for you.