WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Edit/Delete admin area

for

From: Cheryl D Wise
Date: Mar 18, 2005 1:28PM

Sure, I could go ahead, open the message in Outlook and change the View |
Text Size for each message but frankly I need a reason to go to that much
trouble. I normally read mail without opening it (attachments are stripped
and my mail is heavily filtered before it gets to the preview pane). If I
have to do something like that it would be to use Format | Plain Text which
also solves the size issue. Personally I don't like receiving mail lists in
HTML but if someone is using HTML I shouldn't need to increase the font size
that I've already set my system to in order to read their message. I happen
to have large fonts set on my system so I can comfortably read normal
messages whether text or html. Yet the message that triggered my comment
completely ignored my specified font settings probably because of the use of
the in the code.

I suspect that I'm in the majority in subscribing to the philosophy that I
shouldn't have to take extra trouble once I've configured my system setting
to meet my size needs to read someone's email, especially on an
accessibility related mail list.

Cheryl D. Wise
Certified Professional Web Developer
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://wiserways.com
Office: 713-353-0139

-----Original Message-----
From: mroush

cdwise wrote:
> While we are at it, why the tiny text in HTML emails? Impossible to
> read on my system so I haven't been following this thread.

I don't mean to chide, but this is a good example of why accessibility will
always be behind 'mainstream' technology. Depending on one's chosen e-mail
application, increasing a font size in a received e-mail is as simple as
clicking a menu item and choosing larger text, or a keystroke, or a
combination-keypress-and-mouse-action. But, passing on the content is
happening - because the material did not arrive at the user's computer in a
form where it was easy to read.

I did much the same thing with the first tiny font e-mail I got on this
thread.... I just skipped over it and went back later after I had read
everything else I got in that bunch. However, I think the lesson for
designers still stands.... 'making accessible' is one thing, making code
that really accomplishes what you are trying to do is sometimes quite
another, and something that cannot be controlled because it involves choices
on the part of the user.