Re: Text email newsletter standard

This Text E-Mail Newsletter (TEN) [note 1]so called standard seems to be 
used as a format for web pages as well.  And more interestingly it is in 
direct conflict with the latest draft of WCAG 2.0's [note 2] requirement 
1.3 to not allow flat unstructured text.  See 
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#content-structure-separation Level 1 Success 
Criteria, which basically says that there can be no flat text, but that, 
for example, paragraphs, lists, and headings must be identified 
programmatically in the mark-up.

Personally, I believe that flat text is sufficient and that the level 1 
requirement in the WCAG 2.0 draft is too high of a priority.  Surely flat 
unstructured text has been used successfully by users with disabilities 
for a long time.  Even the WAI e-mail list archives would not comply and 
they are perfectly usable as they are.  However, I agree that structured 
text with HTML markup for lists, headings, paragraphs, etc. are better 
than a new plain text standard such as TEN.  In other words, newsletters 
could (level 2 requirement) also be available in HTML format instead of 
just flat text content - no need for new sudo mark-up conventions such as 
TEN.

Regards,
Phill Jenkins

note 1 http://www.headstar.com/ten/
note 2 latest WCAG 2.0 draft  http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/