Tokyo woman working to help people with disabilities secure jobs
A 39-year-old woman in Tokyo has been working to help people with disabilities get jobs in an effort to create a society that recognizes the value of all people.
In May 2018, Rie Usui, who now runs a talent agency for disabled people, welcomed a young woman in a wheelchair to her home doubling as a nail salon.
The woman had complained that there were no barrier-free nail salons that accommodated wheelchair users, and no schools offering nail design courses to people with disabilities.
Springing into action, Usui started hosting nail design lessons in Tokyo twice a month for people with disabilities on a voluntary basis. In August 2020, she founded her company, Accessibeauty, to train such people to become nail technicians.
Usui tried to offer online courses, but she ultimately abandoned the idea mainly due to issues with tuition fees.
In September 2020, she started recruiting, through social media, models with disabilities to be featured in photos for the company's website.
About 50 people applied to become models, exceeding her expectations, and many people inquired about being models after the photos were taken.
This prompted Usui to put her dream of training nail technicians to one side for the time being, and instead she created an online magazine focusing on people with disabilities in March 2021.
She held an audition to hire three disabled models for her magazine, with as many as about 150 people applying for the job. After discovering many attractive talents among them, she formed a talent agency as an arm of Accessibeauty to accept those who were not picked at the audition.
The company has held an audition every year since then. It has also opened a school teaching modeling poses and acting.
Currently, the talent agency represents about 40 models and television personalities who feature in advertisements and TV drama series.
Saying that moves to feature disabled people in advertisements and TV drama series have only just started, Usui said, "The biggest issue is whether this will take hold."
Regarding the entertainers at Accessibeauty, she said, 'I hope to offer support so that they would be able to achieve as many dreams and goals as possible.'
In January this year, the company opened up a barrier-free nail salon within its office.
"We won't be able to provide job opportunities for disabled people unless we offer a place where they can hone their skills," Usui said. "I hope to work on training nail technicians as well."
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