Canon - Presenting at the United Nations CRPD

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 Braille 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.