On 12/20/12 9:29 AM, Rob wrote: > Philip TAYLOR <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> Rob wrote: >> >>> The world today is no longer about bytes or kilobytes. >>> Today we calculate in megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes. >>> >>> People no longer treat mail as a novelty that can transfer messages >>> like a telex did in the past. They use it like a fax or letter. >>> That means mail includes mark-up, letterhead, vcard-like signatures, etc. >> >> That means mail /can/ include markup, letter-heads, signatures, etc. >> But it does not have to. As this message demonstrates. > > What does this message demonstrate?
It deomonstrates that meaningful information can indeed be communicated without HTML formatting. >>> I have no problem if you want to aleniate yourself from that world, >>> but it is the world that businesses and software operates in. >> >> And how many of those business, and what fraction of that software, >> addresses the vital issue of accessibility ? When I send an e-mail, >> there is not a blind computer user on this planet who does not have >> access to its contents, if it reaches him or her. 90+% of the HTML >> e-mails I receive are completely inaccessible to blind people : no "alt" >> attributes, no "longdesc"s, no accommodation whatsoever to those who do >> not have sight. That world is not for me. > > We have a blind user in the company. He uses Seamonkey with special > software that reads the contents of his mails using a voice synthesizer. > It is kind of a pain because the software must be told after every > Seamonkey release that Seamonkey is really Firefox, but aside from > that it works OK. There really is no performance difference between > HTML and text mail while doing this text to speech. > > But he keeps insisting that the support for mainstream software like > Internet Explorer, Outlook and Adobe Reader (we use an alternative PDF > reader as well) is much much better than for the software we have. > > It appears the accessability software industry focusses heavily on > mainstream software and less on opensource products. That is more > of an issue than the mail being HTML or text. > Yes, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey do a relatively good job in composing valid HTML for E-mail. As this thread reveals, however, the HTML is not totally valid. Too often, it contains "tag soup". Other E-mail applications are not as good in creating valid HTML. Businesses that use such applications in the U.S. risk running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) because their E-mail -- and their Web sites -- cannot be processed with audio browsers for the blind. In 2008, this situation cost Target Stores $6,000,000 in damages plus a requirement for Target to have the National Federation of the Blind monitor -- at Target's expense -- the future evolution of Target's Web site. ASCII-formatted E-mail and W3C-validation of Web pages avoid such problems, problems that sometimes appear even in E-mail messages generated by Thunderbird and SeaMonkey. -- David E. Ross <http://www.rossde.com/> Anyone who thinks government owns a monopoly on inefficient, obstructive bureaucracy has obviously never worked for a large corporation. © 1997 by David E. Ross _______________________________________________ support-seamonkey mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
