RE: E-mail Standards; was: Bobby Approval

Hi Shoshana,

I'm not aware of any standards on e-mail per se. The only one that many 
people with & without disabilities complain about is the use of HTML markup 
in E-mail. So for many groups plain text is the clear preference. (Of 
course there are other groups who want as many graphical cues as possible, 
so it's hard to win on this one.)

Another issue is emoticons, which don't work well with screen readers, 
although this is mainly an issue of screen reader settings. For example, if 
punctuation reading is turned off, the emoticon will be skipped completely. 
However, it is possible to define pronunciation dictionary entries for 
common emoticons, so that :) will be spoken as "grin", etc. (this is an 
intermediate skill level, i'd say). ... But to get around this completely, 
many people on blindness-related lists etc use <grin>, <laugh>, & so forth.

Patrick

At 10:05 PM 6/28/01, Shoshana Billik wrote:
>         Hi again, everyone!  Thanks to all of those who took the time to 
> respond
>to my question about Bobby.  On a somewhat related but slightly tangential 
>note,
>are there similar standards in place for e-mail?  If not official ones 
>like Section
>508, are there any de facto standards amongst the accessibility community,
>especially for people who are blind or who have low vision?
>
>                                                                 Thanks again,
>                                                                 Shoshana

Received on Friday, 29 June 2001 14:14:47 UTC