colinbdclark · November 5, 2016 15:11
diff --git a/a11y-camp-to-welcome-talk.txt b/a11y-camp-to-welcome-talk.txt
 Hi everyone, I'm Colin Clark, and I work at the Inclusive Design Research Centre here at OCAD University. I'd like to welcome you to OCAD today. Over the past six years, the IDRC has been honoured to help give Camp a home here, and to be participants in this amazing, diverse, and growing community of people who care about accessibility and inclusive design. 

 It's awesome to see so many of you here today--there's something very special about Toronto and its commitment to inclusion, and you all are the reason why this city is recognized around the world for its impact in inclusive design. Since we're camping out here at Canada's largest art and design university, I thought I'd reflect for a moment today on the craft and creativity of this accessibility movement we're all a part of. 

 We know that accessibility isn't just the right thing to do. It's not just our moral responsibility, or our legal obligation, or our social commitment. It is those things, but it's also something more: it's a force for positive change, a source of new ideas, and a catalyst for innovation. Inclusive design is better design. 

 When we design for diversity, we have to face all those thorny, difficult, context-sensitive problems head-on that everyone else wants to ignore or leave until later. Questions like: How do we design for multiple modalities, perspectives, and formats? How can we make our sites adapt to an individual's needs and preferences, while still rendering beautifully out of the box? How do we make sure that people with disabilities aren't just represented in our design processes as personas or market research statistics, but are full creative participants? 

 As accessibility practitioners, it's our mission to come up with solutions to problems that others think are simply impossible. While many in technology are busy chasing the ghosts of yesterday's innovations using the old-fashioned methods--designing only for the majority, the typical, or the minimum viable--we, on the other hand, know that genuinely new ideas grow from the margins, from doing things differently, and from supporting a diversity of perspectives, approaches, and ways of living. It this diversity that fuels our community's creativity and commitment, and with this diversity, we will help to make the next generation of technologies, websites, and apps--and our physical environments and policy landscape--more inclusive, more adaptable and resilient, and more creatively expressive for everyone.

 So today, we are all artists and designers. Accessibility Camp is a place where we can all "get to know us" as a community, to be creative and curious, and to share and learn from each others' unique ideas, technical approaches, and life experiences--however different, untypical, or impossible they may seem at first. Today, we'll all be designing a more inclusive world, one little step at a time. I'm very glad to be a part of this movement with you all.

 Thank you very much, and welcome to OCAD.
	Hi everyone, I'm Colin Clark, and I work at the Inclusive Design Research Centre here at OCAD University. I'd like to welcome you to OCAD today. Over the past six years, the IDRC has been honoured to help give Camp a home here, and to be participants in this amazing, diverse, and growing community of people who care about accessibility and inclusive design.

	It's awesome to see so many of you here today--there's something very special about Toronto and its commitment to inclusion, and you all are the reason why this city is recognized around the world for its impact in inclusive design. Since we're camping out here at Canada's largest art and design university, I thought I'd reflect for a moment today on the craft and creativity of this accessibility movement we're all a part of.

	We know that accessibility isn't just the right thing to do. It's not just our moral responsibility, or our legal obligation, or our social commitment. It is those things, but it's also something more: it's a force for positive change, a source of new ideas, and a catalyst for innovation. Inclusive design is better design.

	When we design for diversity, we have to face all those thorny, difficult, context-sensitive problems head-on that everyone else wants to ignore or leave until later. Questions like: How do we design for multiple modalities, perspectives, and formats? How can we make our sites adapt to an individual's needs and preferences, while still rendering beautifully out of the box? How do we make sure that people with disabilities aren't just represented in our design processes as personas or market research statistics, but are full creative participants?

	As accessibility practitioners, it's our mission to come up with solutions to problems that others think are simply impossible. While many in technology are busy chasing the ghosts of yesterday's innovations using the old-fashioned methods--designing only for the majority, the typical, or the minimum viable--we, on the other hand, know that genuinely new ideas grow from the margins, from doing things differently, and from supporting a diversity of perspectives, approaches, and ways of living. It this diversity that fuels our community's creativity and commitment, and with this diversity, we will help to make the next generation of technologies, websites, and apps--and our physical environments and policy landscape--more inclusive, more adaptable and resilient, and more creatively expressive for everyone.

	So today, we are all artists and designers. Accessibility Camp is a place where we can all "get to know us" as a community, to be creative and curious, and to share and learn from each others' unique ideas, technical approaches, and life experiences--however different, untypical, or impossible they may seem at first. Today, we'll all be designing a more inclusive world, one little step at a time. I'm very glad to be a part of this movement with you all.

	Thank you very much, and welcome to OCAD.