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Week of 21 February 2003· Vol. VI, No. 22

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SAR student aims to empower those with disabilities in Japan

By David J. Craig

Yuka Fujita was in her late teens when her eyesight deteriorated to the point that she could not participate in many regular activities. Socializing was difficult because she could not walk outside at night by herself. Bicycling around her Tokyo neighborhood was out of the question. And schoolwork became laborious and frustrating, as she could read at about a third the speed of her classmates, and teachers offered her no accommodations.



Yuka Fujita (SAR’03), who is legally blind, plans to work as a rehabilitation counselor in Japan, where physical and mental disabilities are not well accepted and people with disabilities are offered few supports. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

“The biggest thing was that I wanted to be able to just hang out,” says Fujita (SAR’03), now 35 and a graduate student in the rehabilitation counseling program at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. “But to go anywhere at night I had to ask someone to take me, and I often wouldn’t do that because I was afraid of being rejected.”

Fujita says many Japanese people with physical or mental disabilities face the same dilemma -- pressured by a conformist culture that frowns upon any signs of difference, they struggle to conceal their impairment, often choosing not to avail themselves of the few supports open to them. In their daily lives, in school, and in the workplace, they see two options: ask for help and risk discrimination, or pretend to be normal and underachieve.

Fujita is determined to help change that. After completing her studies at Sargent, she plans to return to Japan and launch her own counseling service to help people with disabilities learn the skills necessary to lead full lives, and to encourage them to stick up for themselves when they need assistance. Because rehabilitation counseling is not an established field in Japan, Fujita has not yet ascertained what government agencies or private interests might bankroll such an enterprise there. In fact, she plans to stay in the United States for two years after graduating in May, in part to learn about nonprofit business models that might provide clues about how to start such a service.

Fujita’s career goals are ambitious, but judging by the adversity she already has overcome, she may very well attain them. Born with underdeveloped optic nerves, she has been losing her eyesight gradually since birth. As a child, she led a relatively normal life, but about seven years ago her eyesight regressed to where she was legally blind, and it continues to worsen. Despite her disability, however, and without ever having received special support in school, Fujita graduated from Rikkyo University in Tokyo in 1990 and in 1999 earned a master’s degree in psychology from Tokyo’s Meiji Gakuin University.

“School for me in Japan was like being in a wrestling match where you can’t even get into the ring,” says Fujita, who was born and raised in Tokyo. “I worked extremely hard and I knew I could perform, but I wasn’t given a chance to show it.” Fujita was allowed no extra time to complete in-class exams, for instance, although in order to read the questions she had to hold the words an inch from her eyes, and then write her answers at an agonizingly slow pace. By the time she was in college, she could not read anything on a blackboard and completing any reading assignment was a monumental task. “It was nothing like at BU,” she says, “where a note-taker and a reader come to class with me, and where the Office of Disability Services provides me with audiotapes of all my reading materials.”

It was while working as an administrator at a Tokyo social benefits office after college that Fujita decided to come to the United States to study rehabilitation counseling, a field she had read about in Western academic journals. “The environment at my job wasn’t very supportive, but I did all right because I was good at expressing my needs to my coworkers,” she says. “But I met many people coming through our office who had lost
a job because of a disability, and sometimes they had resigned without ever expressing what their needs were. Many of them could have kept working if they had gotten just a little bit of support.”

Today Fujita interns as a rehabilitation counselor at a Goodwill Industries community center in Boston, helping people with a variety of physical and mental disabilities learn basic life, social, and work skills, and preparing them to hunt for jobs. Her relationship with many of her clients is stronger for her own disability, she says, because they relate to her on a personal level. “I think a lot of them feel, if Yuka can do it, so can I,” she says.

Fujita anticipates that in Japan her counseling will focus on helping people cope with their personal relationships, as people in that country identify themselves more by their social ties than do Americans, and less by their occupation. Moreover, she explains, in Japan it is considered the responsibility of the family to take care of people with disabilities -- rather than that of the larger community, as is the case in the West -- and this often causes tension between the disabled and their relatives.

“Because Americans are very individualistic, I think it is seen as all right in the United States to be a little bit different, but in Japan people do not like difference, and they don’t deal with disability very well,” says Fujita. “To have a disability is shameful in Japan, and it is shameful for a family. I have relatives who have said things right in front of me like, ‘It’s nice to do well in school, but what really matters is your health. What do good grades matter if you can’t see?’

“I never even used a cane to walk until I came to the United States, because in Japan I was so determined to blend in, and not to be viewed as different,” she continues. “But for things to start to change in Japan, people with disabilities have to be able to explain assertively what their abilities are and what their limitations are. I want to help empower people to do that.”

Office of Disability Services removes roadblocks

Attending college can be a bit overwhelming for any young adult, but for a student with a serious physical or mental disability, even simple tasks such as taking notes, reading an exam question, or finding a book in the library can pose formidable challenges.

It is the goal of the Office of Disability Services, however, to ensure that all Boston University students have the same opportunity to demonstrate their abilities and intelligence. Serving a total of about 400 students, the office offers a wide variety of accommodations to those with visual, hearing, or other physical impairments, learning disabilities, and clinically diagnosed psychological and psychiatric conditions. Accommodations are individually tailored, as the office staff works closely with students to determine the combination of services most helpful to them.

Those who are blind or have low vision, for instance, may choose to have a student paid by the Office of Disability Services take notes for them in class, read aloud to them information on a blackboard, or write down their answers on an in-class exam. The office provides textbooks and course materials in alternative formats, such as e-texts, audiotapes,
or Braille texts when available, and it arranges for students to have access to special technology on campus, such as computer programs that recite written texts and closed-circuit televisions that magnify them. In addition, the office pays professional mobility orientation instructors to help blind students learn their way around campus, and it arranges for many who are disabled, including those with low vision, to be allowed extra time to complete in-class exams.

“We look at the situation of every student individually when deciding what accommodations are appropriate,” says Daniel Berkowitz, assistant director of the Office of Disability Services. “The most important thing we need to determine is how a student’s disability affects his or her ability to access the academic environment. If students have a diagnosed psychological issue that causes them to feel extreme stress, for example, we might decide that it is necessary for them to have one-and-a-half as much time as other students to complete in-class exams. The goal in that instance is to relieve their stress level so that the psychological issue is alleviated.”

Berkowitz says that many students served by the Office of Disability Services have a diagnosed learning disability, such as attention deficit disorder. These students may be provided with a notetaker and audio recordings of lectures in addition to having access to special study skills workshops and tutoring programs, and consultations with learning specialists.

However, the office deals with students whose conditions range from dyslexia to deafness to extreme physical immobility. “I’ve yet to come across a type of disability that we couldn’t handle,” Berkowitz says. “Probably the biggest roadblock we face when trying to serve students is not being given enough advance notice to address their requirements. If students need some books on tape and they come to us the day before classes begin, we’ll do our best, but it’s very helpful to know what they need a few weeks before the semester starts.”

Berkowitz points out that some BU students with physical mobility issues never contact his office, which he considers a positive reflection of BU’s accessibility to the mobility-impaired. He recommends that all students with disabilities learn about the office, however, because it offers a wide variety of resources that can be helpful even to those who are highly independent.

“We encourage students to apply for accommodations as a backup even if they’re not sure they’ll need them,” says Berkowitz. “It’s better to have accommodations approved and to not use them than to find out halfway through a semester that you need accommodations and have to go through the whole approval process then.

“What we offer students is the opportunity to perform on a level playing field,” he continues. “We never promise any students that they will be successful at BU. What we promise is that by giving them accommodations, we’ll make the academic environment equitable. It’s their responsibility to make use of those accommodations and to excel.”
For more information, visit www.bu.edu/disability. --DJC

21 February 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations