Preparations for the start of a new university year had gone well. My courses were prepared and I was ready for the start of classes and the new intake of students the following week. Four or five days before the start of classes, a faculty member mentioned to me that there was to be a blind student, Satoshi, in my freshman English class that met twice a week. "Well, in actual fact, he is not totally blind, but visually impaired to a considerable degree," the faculty member corrected himself. He continued, but I was only half listening. My carefully prepared syllabus (I had designed a varied course to motivate my first year students for the seventy-five hours of class time that I would spend with them over a nine month period) was flying around my head, and I was imagining how a blind or visually impaired student would be able to cope with it. How on earth would Satoshi be able to deal with work based from the textbook? How would he cope with information that was written on the blackboard? How about extra materials that I would throw together at the last minute to flesh out certain lessons, or to deal with problems that had come up for students in a previous class? How about the video elements of my course? And what about the class computer sessions? Even the listening elements of the course relied on textbook questions or handouts. How, in short, could he possibly take part actively in all parts of the English syllabus?