スライド 1

ITU Workshop on Accessibility/Atelier UIT sur l’accessibilité
Bamako, Mali 13 – 15 October 2009
Multi-tools in My Pocket:
In-Class Use of Mobile Phones for
Children with Disabilities
Kenryu Nakamura
Mamoru Iwabuchi
Takeo Kondo
RCAST, University of Tokyo, Japan
Yasutaka Natsuka
Midori Umehara
SoftBank
Corp.,
Japan
ITU Workshop on Accessibility
Bamako, Mali, 13 – 15 October 2009
International
Telecommunication
Union
1. What is RCAST?
Stands for “Research Center for Advanced Science
and Technology”
•
Interdisciplinary team conducting barrier-free
research
•
About 20 members, including 7 staff with,
disabilities, specialized in engineering, disability
study, education, psychology, and sociology
•
Project leader Prof. Satoshi Fukushima is deafblind
•
Prof. Satoshi Fukushima was chosen as one of Asian
Heroes of TIME magazine in 2003.
2. Present situation of special education
in Japan
Number of schools (number of students)
Special schools
1,030
(117,000)
Elementary schools
22,258
(7,064,000)
Junior high schools
10,864
(3,600,000)
680,000 students have learning difficulties in regular
classrooms of elementary and junior high.
In today’s special education
• Self-effort is expected
• Many teachers and parents are reluctant
to use assistive technology
- Rehabilitation and education might be delayed
- Special technology is expensive
- Negative feeling to partiality
• Limited/no accommodation
↓
→
Low transition rate to higher education
Low employment rate
→
Refuse going to school
Delinquency
3. Potential of mobile phones
as a tool in special education
• Widely used and easy to get
• Many people always carry with them
• Can run on batteries during in-class use
• Needs little space on the desk
• Many useful features for educational settings
are built-in
4. Technology not in use
Regardless of the type of disabilities, technology can be
a solution to overcome difficulties
For example, taking a note is difficult for a person
with physical disability
who is deaf or hard of hearing
who is blind or have low vision
with intellectual disability
with developmental disability
→ Recording device/function can cover all the
disabilities above in that situation
But it is not commonly recognized. Teachers and parents
tend to treat disability with trainings rather than compensate
disability using technology.
5. Anxiety toward mobile phones among
school teachers and administrators
They tend to restrict the use of mobile phones among children in
order to avoid their access to unwanted information.
Year 2008: Japanese government proposed “no mobile phones for
elementary school pupils” to prevent harmful information to them
Year 2009 (June): Children’s act (revised) in Ishikawa, Japan:
Parents and family are asked to prohibit school-age children (age
under 15) from using mobile phones except for the cases of the
prevention against disaster and crimes, or other special cases.
Government survey (Dec. 2008) showed over 90% of
elementary/junior high schools prohibit students’ use of mobile
phones at school
6. Technology bringing out children’s
potential
Meets a autistic boy Aki in 1995
Non-speaking, difficult to have an eye contact, and
difficult to communicate
• Aki can communicate using a PDA, a pager, or a mobile
phone
• Aki often finds text-based instructions easier than oral
instructions
• His independent living was supported by IT devices
including calculators and electronic dictionaries
→ But dealing with many devices was troublesome
7. Project overview
(1)Purpose
Collecting information about good use of mobile phones
for children with disabilities in their learning and daily
lives, and creating a textbook about the good use of it
(2) Method
Five areas in Japan are chosen for the experiment.
Mobile phone are provided and used by elementary,
junior high, and special school children with disabilities
in their classes.
Period: June – September, 2009
(3) Cases
Child A (intellectual disability)
Child A onetime forgot getting off the train and lost his way
to school. He handed his mobile phone to a stranger and
the person could call and ask the child’s family to pick him
up. Mobile phone can give a sense of security to this child
and his family and enables the child to go to school
independently.
Child B (dysgraphia)
Memo features of mobile phones enables her to write in a
proper manner and helped to build her self-confidence.
Child C (autism)
Child C was often panicked due to his time
insensitivity; he did not understand how long he
had to wait or be in class even the number of
minutes left was told. Graphical timer of a
mobile phone helped him to understand time.
Child D (autism)
It was difficult for Child D to explain his idea
verbally. He then used a mobile phone to take
pictures of what he liked and wanted to do. The
pictures were shown to his classmates. The
device helped him to enrich his communication
with friends.
Child E (Muscular Dystrophy)
Child E was not able to use printed dictionary due
to his motor disability. But, he could access to
electronic dictionary in mobile phone.
8. Future plan
Create a textbook and hold seminars for teachers
and parents in Japan.
Conduct research into the use of existing and
generally available mainstream technology
Conducting Research of attitude toward use of
mobile phone in school
Translate the textbook into English
ICT accessibility project from 2004-2007 in Japan
• Windows OS includes many useful features for PWD
that accords with Rehabilitation Act of the US
• However, these features do not attract a good deal
of attention in the US and UK
– Active AT market by third party companies
– Support for AT provision based on insurance
system
• Limited/No support for AT provision in many
countries in Asian-Pacific area
→ Widespread use of accessibility features of PC
• Over 1,000 participants, mainly
school teachers, have been
trained in Japan
• Microsoft Asia supported the
English translation of the
textbooks
• Seminars conducted for Asian
countries
→ A scheme for AT provision
ICT Accessibility Textbook
• Contact address:
[email protected]

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