Why I Joined KINTO Technologies as a Person with Visual Impairment

This article is for Day 9 of the KINTO Technologies Advent Calendar 2025 🎅🎄

Introduction

Hello. I'm Katsutoshi Tsuji, and I joined KINTO Technologies in November.
I'm an engineer who has worked in the digital accessibility field for over 20 years, and I have been completely blind since birth.

In this article, I'll share why I, a visually impaired person, chose to join KINTO Technologies, a company specializing in mobility, and what kind of future I'm working toward. This might sound like a futuristic dream, but please stick with me to the end.

The Challenges of Mobility for Visually Impaired People

I was born in Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture. Nagasaki is known as a city of hills. Buses were more common than trains, but my home was far from the bus stop, making it unrealistic for a visually impaired person to live independently.

When I was a child, every household had a car, and transportation centered around driving. The only way I could get around was to have my family drive me.

When I moved to Tokyo about 30 years ago, I remember being moved by the realization that once I memorized the route to the station, I could travel freely by train. That's how much my life in the countryside lacked freedom of movement.

The place where I currently live is also far from the station, which is inconvenient for visually impaired people. However, working remotely while listening to the birds singing outside my window is a very pleasant lifestyle. Some of my visually impaired acquaintances worry that it might be inconvenient, but after living here for three years, I haven't experienced any major difficulties in daily life.

My Dream of Autonomous Driving

How interested are you in autonomous driving?
Since I moved here, I have found myself increasingly fascinated by autonomous driving and the possibility it offers: the freedom to move on my own terms. For me, as a visually impaired person, autonomous driving is more than just technology. It is a dream of reclaiming freedom of mobility.

A Video of an Autonomous Taxi Sparked My Interest

The first time I saw a visually impaired person riding in an autonomous vehicle was in a video released by Google in 2012. At the time, I was skeptical, wondering if it could really become a reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE

However, in 2024, I was amazed when I saw a video of a visually impaired person riding in an autonomous taxi. The system allows passengers to operate their smartphone and locate the vehicle by the sound of its horn. What's more, it was actually running on public roads in the United States.
At that moment, I strongly felt that I wanted to try it myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OPiC-zXtJk&list=PLzaPe49p32aZ7SPFDhvgJV-cOpskQ5VYu&index=7

I thought, at KINTO Technologies, I might be able to get involved with autonomous driving technology. Someday, I want to work on projects related to autonomous driving.
This is why I decided to work at a mobility company. I want to leverage the accessibility knowledge I've built over the years to contribute to mobility for visually impaired people.

What I Aim to Achieve at KINTO Technologies

Even if we aim for a future where autonomous vehicles become commonplace for visually impaired people, it won't happen immediately. For most people, visually impaired person and car are probably the most unlikely combination.

As I mentioned earlier, you can probably imagine a visually impaired person being driven somewhere by someone else, but it's harder to imagine them getting into a car alone and traveling to their destination, right?
However, this need definitely exists, and especially visually impaired people living in rural areas dream of a future where they can go wherever they want, whenever they want, by themselves.
While public transportation can get you close to your destination, finding and navigating to the actual location from there is not easy.
For example, even if you use pedestrian GPS navigation to travel, as you approach your destination, the navigation ends with a message like "You are approaching your destination."
Those few meters from there can be a huge hurdle for visually impaired people who cannot see.

In this way, if we replace "car" with "mobility" in the context of visually impaired individuals, everyone can easily understand that the freedom to get around is essential for achieving one's goals. To create a future where autonomous vehicles become a key means of mobility, I will work on the following.

1. Making Accessibility the Norm in the Organization

In the mobility industry, the importance of accessibility is not yet fully recognized. I will engage in careful dialogue within the company to explore together:

Why accessibility is necessary
What teams should start with
What goals we should aim for

By working alongside everyone and showing them the needs of users who may not have been considered before, what inconveniences they experience, and how they solve problems, my goal for the first year is to build an organization where people don't see accessibility as someone else's problem.
As a result, I hope that the accessibility of various initiatives undertaken by KINTO Technologies will improve, reach new users, eventually become a value for the organization, and lead to efforts that change society.

2. Creating an Organization Where People with Disabilities Want to Continue Working

Companies with 50 or more employees are required to hire people with disabilities, but in reality, some say, I don't know how to interact with them, or I can't imagine what kind of work to assign them.
There are many cases where employees are only given standardized tasks and become isolated within the company.

I am not the only employee with a disability at KINTO Technologies. My role is to demonstrate how people with disabilities contribute to the organization, and to foster an environment where we can work together as colleagues toward our company's goals.
And I want to create an organization where we can truly say, "I want to keep working here."

I will maximize the value that can only be changed from inside the organization and contribute to the growth of KINTO Technologies.

Conclusion

For visually impaired people, freedom of movement has the power to change lives. At KINTO Technologies, I will take on the challenge of bringing that future closer to reality.
If anyone resonates with this initiative, I would love to think about the future of mobility together.