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Re: E-access bulletin's Text Email Newsletter Standard

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Oct 14, 2004 2:13PM

> I have been looking at E-access bulletin's Text Email Newsletter (TEN)
> Standard and was wondering what people think of the format.
> You can review the standard at http://www.headstar.com/ten/
>
> For the most part the 23 specifications make sense and will help to
> increase accessibility and usability of plain text emails.

They appear to increase accessibility for those that use screen readers, but
some seem to hinder usability for anyone that doesn't (namely #10).

A text email can benefit from use of style characters:

THIS IS THE NEWSLETTER
=====================================================
Article 1
------------------------------------------------------

which greatly enhances the scanability of the email. Visually, the
specification document they use as the example is rather 'gray'...meaning
there's no obvious visual heirarchy to the structure (other than the +++
characters which are fairly faint in terms of overall text color).

So, and this is just MHO, I think this is one of those areas where
accessibility and usability collide a bit.

That said, a lot of the suggestions make a lot of sense...have a TOC, put
'dust jacket' info at the bottom of the email, etc.

As for the 'plus' issue...I agree. It seems odd to hear 'plus, plus, plus
section name' read out. That said, plain text isn't hierarchical or semantic
like HTML can be (with ULs and such) so I'm not sure what to suggest as an
alternative.

-Darrel