wendy This morning, I had the pleasure of helping to kick off Knowbility’s John Slatin AccessU with a conversation with Sharron Rush and Lainey Feingold, “Honoring Wisdom, Embracing Change: A Conversation about Eldering in the Accessibility Community.” Towards the end of the session I read a revised version of a poem I first read at the CSUN Tweetup in 2010, “An Ode to Twitter.”
Here’s the revision, with a new title: Ode to Accessibility Communities.
My name is Wendy Chisholm and I want to recruit you!
Listen!
Hear.
See.
Feel.
PERCEIVE.
Connection.
Thousands of people (or more?) working on #accessibility.
# a 1 1 y
Access.
Inclusion.
Connection.
We are
Able
To change the world.
Able
To connect with others who are
Able
To connect with others who are
Able
To connect with us who are
Able
To be here *this* morning who are
Able
To hear, see, feel…
PERCEIVE a world where we are all
Able
To change the world.
To innovate.
To connect.
Our community invented the innovations that make iPhones and Androids possible:
Onscreen keyboards,
Word prediction,
Screen magnification,
Speech recognition.
What we do today makes tomorrow’s innovations possible.
Makes tomorrow’s tools work for more people in more situations,
Makes technology more flexible.
WE ROCK!!
AND
We still have so much to do:
So many more restaurants to make accessible to people who use wheelchairs,
So many images still need alt-text,
So much culture change and so many tools are still needed for every new product, website, and application to be accessible and usable at the alpha release.
This is my ode to the accessibility community–an amalgam of communities and connections.
My ode to the tribe.
My ode to our connections and our innovations, to our persistence and determination.
Welcome!! Let’s get this party started.