Patronage And Other Musings

You may have noticed the "i'm patronising" badge on the side of this blog. What's it all about? Well, Joe Clark has a big plan and he needs small donations towards keeping him fed, while he spends four months trying to raise $7 million (canadian) to undertake the research he wants to carry out. He's targeting four major strands of accessibility, and has set up the Open & Closed Project in order to do so. By donating a modest sum, folks like you and me can make a small contribution, which in turn will allow Joe to make a big one. Good luck Joe!

Two more recent posts concerning accessibility have caught my eye:

• Frances Berriman raises some good questions in her Developing for Others post, and also encourages some useful feedback. I'm hoping to be able to attend one of the Screen Reader demonstrations on offer in the near future. Whilst I do have access to a copy of JAWS for testing the sites I work on, I've no doubt that a non-sighted user would actually use the software in a completely different way to me - so observing some real-world users first hand will be a great learning experience.
  
• Meanwhile, Chris Heilmann makes us question the way we approach design, by asking, if the Needs of the disabled spark inventions, why not in web design?