Joe Clarke Micropatronage Project
Joe Clark is seeking funding through micropatronage whilst he starts up a research project.
Micropatronage is a form of fundraising in which many donors give small amounts of money. People can donate as much or as little as they want to support Joe for a limited period of time (nominally, four months) as he tries to raise about $7 million Canadian for an accessibility research project. The donations won’t fund the project. They’ll fund Joe (i.e allow him to eat) while he tries to raise the money for the project.
What’s the project?
Called the Open & Closed Project, it focuses on four fields of accessibility - captioning, audio description, subtitling, and dubbing. Joe wants to:
- Write a set of standards based on evidence and research
- Develop training and certification programs
- Work on a universal file format
- Design and test new fonts for captioning and subtitling
Given that captioning is a relatively overlooked and often poorly understood area of accessibility, a project that could achieve these aims would be very welcome.
Just to reiterate, the micropatronage won’t support this project. It’s intended to keep Joe afloat for four months while he tries to put the project funding together.
Joe Clark has spent much of his working life campaigning to make the web accessible to those who don’t hear or see very well, if at all. You may not always agree with his views. I know I sometimes disagree with them. However, I think most people would agree that a voice like his is vital to furthering accessibility across all media. Because, at the end of the day, he makes developers think and he challenges preconceptions.
But most of all, because he questions the status quo. And we need that. Constantly.
I think that’s worth the price of a cup of coffee. Don’t you?
