[html4all] Introductions or a Who's who of html4all

[Joshue O Connor]

I am senior accessibility constant with the National Council for the
Blind of Ireland Centre for Inclusive Technology (NCBI CFIT).
We are advocates for web standards, accessible services and provide
auditing, training, consultancy and user testing services (using our
dedicated observation lab). We work mostly with government and other
public sector bodies. I really enjoy what I do and no two days are the
same. Am also nearly finished my first book which is about the open
source CMS, Joomla! and accessibility (which should be out in December).

I was only looking for a job - and before I knew it I had a career! My
own background is in graphic design, originally for print, Then I got
into the web, new media training and apres dot com bubble crash got a
job working as an IT trainer with people with disabilities which I was
delighted to do as I was getting sick of the buy, buy, sell, sell of the
private sector (which was never really me anyway). This exposed me to
Assistive Technology and I became regional AT person for a national
Irish disability service provider. Then did stint as a developer for a
supported employment project. During this (very fulfilling) time I got
into web accessibility (about 5 years ago) and the rest is history as
they say. I am now happily running around telling off people who should
know better when their code is sloppy and I am *amazed* still at the
amount of developers who don't really know or understand HTML and treat
it as something that 'the editor does'.

I really believe in lifelong learning and am currently studying for a
computer science degree in my spare time. I like to read a lot - when I
have the time - and am currently into medieval fiction. I also run a
small record label (www.techrecord.net)  and play a mean blues guitar
and have been known to growl into a microphone occasionally - but this
can sometimes frighten small children. I also like puppies and walks in
the country he, he.

Like Laura, I also joined the HTML 5 WG  as a response to Hixies' mail,
and have been in shock ever since. I feel slightly ambivalent at this
stage towards the whole thing, as many of you do, and  I am unsure if
all of this effort is worthwhile. Don't get me wrong - am not throwing
in the towel or anything - but I do agree with Philip that the group
should at least have started with HTML 4 Strict and worked from there
(so much for paving the cowpaths).

I reckon that I will be advocating the use of HTML 4 for a time to come
and leaving version 5 for the birds.

Sin e (Irish for 'There it is')

Josh