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From: Mark Robbins
Date: Apr 19, 2016 9:37AM

Hi all,

I'm new to this group so thanks for letting me in.

I'm an email developer and I'm currently working on modular email tempting
system for our company Rebelmail. The end results will be email code send
by a number of major brands world wide so I thought it'd be a good idea to
get an accessibility plan in place.

I've read up a bit on accessibility for email but I've not been able to
find much specifically related to what I'm working on, so thought I'd see
if anyone here can help...


*Firstly*, is there any data available on different ways people use email
with assistive technology? I've heard people say plain text can be better
for screen readers but you also lose the hierarchy of information you get
with HTML. Also are there any specific assisted email clients?


*Secondly,* there is a popular hack to get CSS to work in Gmail the uses
the lang attribute. Email clients annoyingly edit the code you send before
displaying it to the user, one of the things Gmail does is strip out every
class and id from the code so styes are not applied. The way we get around
this is using lang="x-foo" instead of class="foo" then targeting that in
the style sheet.

This is a language attribute which could potentially cause issues but
prefixing it with x- means it will be interpreted as an experimental
language according to the spec
<https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/dirlang.html#h-8.1.1>. Other people
have suggested using the char, summary or aria-labelledby attributes
instead, any thoughts on which is best? There is little difference on the
code side of things.


*Thirdly*, I specialise in interactive email, this means instead of
JavaScript I use radio buttons and checkboxes to control things like, image
galleries, tabs, games etc. As inputs and labels are not being used for
their intended purpose would adding role="presentation" make sense here?

Thanks a lot for any help on the points above or anything else you might
have to add.

Regards,
Mark
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