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