You can’t always get what you want

October 16, 2009 / This, dear reader, may indeed be the ultimate cover letter.

Joe Clark has authored the perfect cover letter:

If you want actually inclusive design, change the job

The jobs of the director and professor of inclusive design must be to change the system from within. Far from sentencing designers to 30 years of boredom, doing so will actually equip them to teach student designers to create accessible objects as a matter of course. In practice they won’t: It won’t be their cup of tea, they’ll do it just to pass a course, they’ll forget about it while on the job, their bosses will ixnay it because “it costs extra” (even if it doesn’t).

But if you want accessible objects, every design prof at the institution has to teach students how to create them, not just two people who come along after the damage is done and try to deprogram the student body (which, incidentally, I have experience doing).…

I’m not what you thought you were looking for

But I am what you need.

If he gets an interview (likely), it will be on his terms and if he gets the job (less likely) then he will have a mandate to really shake things up.

Good luck, Joe.

2 responses

  1. Joe Clark

    It’s always nice to have one online defender. And so often it is you, Adrian.

    October 16th, 2009 at 2:32 pm #

  2. Adrian Cooke

    I like a good critic, Joe. The world needs more of them. Most people find it way too easy to rationalise, to compromise or simply to hope.

    October 16th, 2009 at 9:46 pm #


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