Re: HTML email and Accessibility

Hey Paul 

I did some work around in depth accessibility for email when working on campaigns for the London 2012 Olympics. 

There we aimed as much as possible to cover WCAG 2.0 A, AA and some of AAA (is that right, from memory there are three levels). 

Unfortunately due to extended challenges getting HTML to render properly in email clients, we’re stuck with table tags, which aren’t the best for accessibility. You can mark them up as presentation for some screenreaders, which helps, but otherwise you’re left with a very, *very* simple layout in the majority of email clients.

There are no standards for accessibility in email (to my knowledge). The best approach I’ve found is to take the web ones and try to adhere to those as much as you can without causing other rendering issues.

thanks, e



Elliot Ross
CEO, Taxi for Email
elliot@taxiforemail.com <mailto:elliot@taxiforemail.com>
http://taxiforemail.com <http://taxiforemail.com/> – Stress-free email production



> On 4 Apr 2016, at 21:43, Vic Dinovici <viconemails@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Paul, I mostly code for Canada but you rise a good point here. Is someone who enforces this in US?
> 
> I know about the famous (or infamous) CASL, the antispam Canada law and I know that is enforced and subject to penalties but I never heard of this. 
> 
> Vic
> 
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Fido network.
> From: Paul Tykodi
> Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 4:38 PM
> To: public-htmail@w3.org <mailto:public-htmail@w3.org>
> Reply To: ptykodi@tykodi.com <mailto:ptykodi@tykodi.com>
> Cc: 'Vic Dinovici'
> Subject: RE: HTML email and Accessibility
> 
> Hi Vic,
>  
> In the USA, the financial services industry is required to conform to many different regulations. Specific to accessibility, I have found that financial services organizations will frequently select a web site conformance requirement (Example: WCAG 2.0 AA). From an architectural point of view, one of the challenges then becomes how to develop a Quality Assurance testing process that can act as a safety net to insure that content pushed to a web page actually meets the relevant organizational requirements.
>  
> A major regulatory change coming soon in the USA involves a regulation known as Section 508. Sometime this fall, a refresh to the regulation is expected to be published and one of the things it is expected to stipulate is that PDF formatted content made available via a web site will need to meet accessibility conformance guidelines (Example: PDF/UA). This particular PDF focused standard outlines testable criteria so it is reasonably straight forward to build a Quality Assurance test regime to validate whether a PDF meets appropriate accessibility criteria or not.
>  
> I have encountered the same difficulties as those captured in this e-mail thread from a few years ago when looking for accessibility conformance guidelines for HTML formatted e-mail: http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=4486 <http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=4486>
>  
> I was wondering whether anyone knew of any standards (like WCAG 2.0), which had been developed to provide accessibility conformance guidelines specific to composing HTML e-mail?
>  
> Thanks.
>  
> Best Regards,
>  
> /Paul
> --
> Paul Tykodi
> Principal Consultant
> TCS - Tykodi Consulting Services LLC
> 
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> From: Vic Dinovici [mailto:viconemails@gmail.com] 
> Sent: Friday, April 1, 2016 10:04 PM
> To: Paul Tykodi <ptykodi@tykodi.com>; public-htmail@w3.org
> Subject: Re: HTML email and Accessibility
>  
> Hey mate,
> What exactly do you need?
>  
> Cheers, Vic 
>  
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Fido network.
> From: Paul Tykodi
> Sent: Friday, April 1, 2016 9:31 PM
> To: public-htmail@w3.org <mailto:public-htmail@w3.org>
> Reply To: ptykodi@tykodi.com <mailto:ptykodi@tykodi.com>
> Subject: HTML email and Accessibility
>  
> Hi,
>  
> I am currently working on a Customer Communications Management architecture project for a financial services firm. 
>  
> Right now I am looking for good reference material, which speaks to meeting conformance requirements for accessibility when composing HTML formatted e-mail.
>  
> Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated.
>  
> Thanks.
>  
> Best Regards,
>  
> /Paul
>  
>  
> <image001.png>
> 
> Paul Tykodi
> Principal Consultant
> Tykodi Consulting Svcs LLC
> Phone:
> (603) 343-1820
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> Co-Chair               - IEEE-ISTO PWG IPP Working Group
> Vice-Chair             - IEEE-ISTO PWG Semantic Model Working Group
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