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, 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.