Ability Magazine
My Name is Paul Albano,
I'm with Canon USA.
At Canon we are driven by the
corporate philosophy of "Kyousei"
which means "living and working
together for the common good".
That philosophy drives all
of our activities at Canon
from the way in which
we design our products
to our relationships with
our customers
and communities in which we operate in
as well as our
management structure.
At Canon we strive to design
technology
that's accessible to the
widest range of users
regardless of their abilities.
In our office equipment
environment,
we strive to design
technology and solutions
that will allow people
to do their work
with great ease of use
and great efficiency
so that technology
can be enjoyed
and used by people
of all abilities.
Our founder, Dr. Mitarai,
shortly after we introduced
our first camera
we introduced the world's first
indirect X-ray camera
which is used
to help diagnose
certain diseases
such as tuberculosis
In the 1970's we were
actually a distributor
of certain accessibility products
We actually manufactured a product called
"Cannon Communicator"
and we were a distributor
of a product called
the "Optacon".
Today we're designing
multifunctional office equipment
that will allow people
to perform their daily work
much more easily
and efficiently
and by removing many
of the common barriers
that they may experience
from office products.
For example, UI screens,
which do not have any tactile
markings or indications
are able to now
provide access
to the user interface
using things
such as voice guidance
or voice navigation.
We're able to apply things
such as red label kits
to our products
which help folks
with low vision
to identify key components
of the system.
Most of our machines
also can work
or integrate with
screen readers
and screen magnification
software
so many of many
device drivers
and utilities can be accessed
from a remote location,
or from a desktop.
So these are just some examples
of how we strive to make
our technology accessible
for people in an office setting,
allow people to do
their work
much more independently.