As I was unable to attend @Media this year, I still haven’t had the opportunity to meet Joe Clark ‘in the flesh’. However, I did hear from his blog that he’s retiring from web accessibility. He has other things to work on.

Well, I didn’t hear it from his blog straight away. Firstly I had to get our firewall settings to be adjusted because it was telling me Fawny (Joe’s blog) was “adult/mature content”. In other words, that Joe Clark’s blog is actually a porn site.

Er…?

Well, Joe talks about accessibility, typography, and frequently the problems he has getting a cup of coffee the way he likes it. He also says “fuck” from time to time. He also refers to himself as a sarcastic gay vegan. Adult content? Yes, probably. Not much for kiddies there. But we all know that isn’t what is meant by “adult content”.

We all know the equation. Adult content = nudie pictures.

Otherwise if adult content just meant “adult issues”, I’d expect half of the news sites in the world to be blocked off as they talk about death, destruction, terrorism, people losing their jobs etc.

So, the way I see it there are two possible scenarios:

1. The firewall mis-categorised Joe’s site
2. Joe is retiring from web accessibility because he’s about to relaunch Fawny as a porn site, and the firewall worked it out

We’ll just have to wait and see…

On a more serious note though, I’d like to thank Joe for the work he’s done on accessibility, and the passion he’s clearly put into it. I’d like to thank him for his blog, which I’ve been enjoying for some time now (although I’m presuming that’s staying); I’d like to thank him for the work he’s put in fixing WCAG 1.0 (expect my two penn’orth any day now); and I’d like to thank him for inspiring many other people working in the accessibility field.

Take a bow, Joe: you’re a true accessibility superhero (but don’t start wearing red underwear over your trousers).