Tsukuba University, Paving the Way for Higher Deaf Education in Japan

The Deaf community is fortunate to have Tsukuba University of Technology (TUT), a sister school to NTID through the PEN International Progra. It is the only higher education university for both deaf students and blind students in Japan. Classes for deaf students are taught or interepreted in JSL. Therefore they can focus on their education fully instead of splitting time advocating for interpreting services, notetakers or lipreading while studying. Students can chose to major in Engineering, Computers (IT), Electronics, Architecture, etc. The most fascinating statistic we learned from Dr. Mayumi Shirasawa in the Research and Support Center is that TUT has a 100% job placement percentage for graduates!

TUT is currently developing a Remote Sign Language Interpreting System to make more university level courses readily available to Deaf and Hard of Hearing students. We had an opportunity to view a demonstration of this technology and look forward to learning more about it's future availability. It is wonderful to know that this kind of techology is breaking through to help better the lives of deaf people all over.