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Re: Email with HTML content

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Jun 2, 2022 10:08AM

On 2022-06-01 09:57, Alan Zaitchik wrote:
> [....] the original email file is not accessible in Outlook— nested presentation tables, lack of headings and list structures, and more. Screen readers give an inferior expeeience, to say the least. [....]

Having an alternate method of accessing the email is always good. Also, including a plain text version - the email format allows for the inclusion both.

But I didn't think that emails fall under the WCAG in a simple way, do they? It is very common for emails to use nested presentation tables, for example, and that is partly in order to deal with the fact that there are so many different email rendering engines and that (almost?) NONE of them actually process HTML correctly according to spec.

I'm not sure that nested tables, for example, are on their own an accessibility barrier in emails, are they? They don't meet the HTML spec of course, but do they actually present a barrier to reading for screen reader users?

And sending emails in plain text only isn't necessarily a good solution for accessibility either.

That's not to say that we shouldn't be trying to find ways to create properly tagged HTML emails, but even really great email systems are still generating wacky code in order to fix broken email readers, aren't they?

List please don't hesitate to let me know if I"m wrong on this!

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications