As many of you will already know, I’ve had a number of erm… disagreements with Mike Davies of Isolani. These have mostly come about because we fit into different ‘accessibility camps’: I believe accessibility shouldn’t stop at “enabling access to people with disabilities” but should also encompass cross-browser and cross-platform support where possible. Mike disagrees. I think failing to mark up changes in language doesn’t necessarily make your page impossible to access by persons with disabilities; Mike disagrees.

You’re all intelligent enough to make up your own minds on these issues, and I don’t mind whether you agree with me or with Mike. I’m not telling you what to think. And nor am I wanting to cover old ground again: I’m just ‘setting the scene’, if you like…

What I do want to do is to praise Mike Davies.

Neither me nor Mike are going to @Media 2007; Mike through personal choice, me through … well, not through personal choice. But what Mike has done is to put his money where his public mouth is in backing Joe Clark’s micropatronage project:

…I did something silly instead. I donated the @media 2007 ticket price (£465) to Joe Clark’s MicroPatronage

…The Micropatronage is an effort to get grassroots support that can help Joe work his way towards qcquiring the necessary funding to spend on researching standards for captioning, audio description, subtitling and dubbing. That standard, I feel, is a valuable investment. I want to see Joe succeed in this.Isolani

Mike, while it won’t surprise you to learn that I’m reserving the right to disagree with you in future (probably loudly, as usual), for this I salute you. Top man.