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Author's popularity: -2
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Popularity: -3
Vote: | A blind person using a screen reader must experience the links one after another, which is rather inconvenient. They've got better things to do. |
Popularity: -4
Vote: | 'Authoring tools' are terrible; there is almost no software that can create closed captions for media players. And of course there is no training. TV captioning is bad enough, and this stuff is generally worse. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Even if you set aside the need for valid code, it is ridiculously easy to find non-government sites that flunk even the simplest and most canonical requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, like using alt texts for images. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | I am not convinced my suggested methods are actually as usable as I think they are. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | I use the same definition of accessibility everywhere: accommodating features a person cannot change or cannot change easily. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | In any event, accessibility is almost as poorly-known now as it was 2.5 years ago when I started work on my book. That's because most 'Web' developers aren't making Web sites at all, since they don't have a clue what valid HTML and CSS means. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Navigation is important, but the single biggest issue is prodding Web developers into learning how to make standards-compliant sites. They've quite simply been doing it wrong all along. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The issue in Web accessibility is the fact that blind and visually-impaired people need the single biggest boost to achieve equivalence, since the real-world Web is a visual medium. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | There are so many parts of online captioning that either don't work or work badly that just getting it to work at all is an achievement. |
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Biography
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The Right Honourable Charles Joseph Clark, PC, CC, BA, MA (born June 5, 1939) was the sixteenth prime minister of Canada from June 4, 1979, to March 2, 1980, and a prominent Canadian politician until his retirement in 2004. He was born in High River, Alberta.
Joe Clark was the son of the publisher of the local newspaper. He attended local schools and the University of Alberta, where he earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in political science. He studied law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was active in student politics, and left law school to work full time for the Progressive Conservative Party.
Clark is married to Maureen McTeer, a well-known author and lawyer. Their daughter, Catherine, is an art history graduate from the University of Toronto who has pursued a career in public relations and broadcasting.
Political career
Clark first became active in politics at the University level. He served as President of the University of Alberta Young Progressive Conservatives. Clark sparred with future political rival Preston Manning in debate forums on campus between the Young PCs and the Youth League of the Alberta Social Credit Party. Clark was keenly aware from a very young age of the politics of Canada. In his youth, Clark was an admirer of Progressive Conservative leader and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and he eventually entered politics himself at the provincial level at the age of 28. He was unsuccessful in his first foray into politics as on official constituency candidate for the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party in the 1967 provincial election. Clark served as a chief assistant to provincial opposition leader and future Premier Peter Lougheed. He was first elected to Parliament in the 1972 federal election. Following the resignation of PC party leader Robert Stanfield, Clark sought and won the leadership of the PC Party at the 1976 leadership convention. Although he placed third in a field of eleven on the first ballot of convention delegates, behind Claude Wagner and Brian Mulroney, he quickly became the compromise Red Tory candidate. The party's right-wing rallied behind Wagner. Mulroney, a Quebec businessman with no elected political experience, was unable to expand his base of support significantly. Many delegates were offended by his expensive leadership campaign. As other Red Tory candidates were eliminated during the first four ballots, Clark gradually overtook Mulroney and then Wagner to emerge as the victor on the fifth ballot.
Joe Clark's rapid rise from a relatively unknown Alberta MP to the Leader of the Opposition took much of Canada by surprise. The Toronto Star announced Clark's victory with a headline that read "Joe Who?" giving Clark a nickname that stuck for years. Much joking was made of Clark's clumsiness and awkward mannerisms. Skinny and tall, editorial cartoonists portrayed him as a sort of walking candy apple, with an enormous head and floppy dog-like ears. Initially, it seemed unlikely that a man that was the source of so much mockery could ever hope to compete against the confident and intellectual Pierre Trudeau.
However, Clark remained belligerent in his attacks on the Trudeau government, angrily clashing with the prime minister in Parliament. Trudeau's attempts to brush off Clark were seen by many Canadians as examples of the pompous attitude of a prime minister who had taken his position for granted.
Clark was the first Canadian politician to take a strong stand for decriminalization of marijuana in Canada, and for a guaranteed minimum income for everyone — both positions characteristic of the Red Tories. In many ways his social liberalism was as bold in the '70s as Trudeau's was in the '60s.
Prime Minister
Joe Clark's efforts would prove successful, and on June 4, 1979, at age 39, he became Canada's youngest prime minister, after defeating Trudeau's Liberal government in the May 1979 general election. Clark was the first Conservative to head Canada's federal government since the defeat of John Diefenbaker in the 1963 election.
But with a minority government in the House of Commons, Clark had to rely on the support of the Social Credit Party with its 6 seats or the New Democratic Party (NDP) with its 26 seats. Without this support, he was subject to defeat by the Liberals at any time.
Social Credit was below the 12 seats needed for official party status in the House of Commons. However, the six seats would have been just enough to give Clark's government a majority had the Progressive Conservatives formed a coalition government with Social Credit, or had the two parties otherwise agreed to work together.
Clark refused to grant the small Social Credit caucus official party status, however, or form a coalition or co-operate with the party in any way. This led to the Clark government's defeat in the House of Commons in December 1979. The Liberals voted with the NDP on a Motion of No Confidence related to the Clark government's budget, moved by NDP MP Bob Rae. The Social Credit caucus abstained, thus ensuring the vote's passage. Though Clark was criticized for his "inability to do math" in failing to predict the vote, at the same time the collapse was at least partially welcomed by his party. When a new election was called, the PC Party expected to be able to defeat the demoralized and leaderless Liberals easily.
During the 1979 election campaign. Clark had promised to cut taxes to stimulate the economy. However, once in office he adopted a budget designed to curb inflation by slowing economic activity, and he also proposed an 18 cent per Imperial gallon tax on gasoline in order to reduce the budgetary deficit. Though Clark had hoped this change in policy would work to his advantage, it actually earned him widespread animosity as a politician who could not keep his promises, even in such a short period.
Pierre Trudeau quickly rescinded his resignation from the Liberal leadership, and swept the Liberal party back into power in the February 1980 election with 146 seats, against 103 for Clark and the Progressive Conservatives.
Trudeau's attitude to Clark
At Trudeau's funeral in 2000, his son Justin Trudeau related a story in which he had childishly insulted one of his father's chief rivals, and his father had corrected him, lectured him sternly on how wrong it was to demonize or insult someone just because they disagreed. At this point in the ceremony, the CBC cut to an image of Clark, leading many to believe that Clark was the man Justin had insulted.
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Joe Clark".
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