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From: Rick
Date: Jun 21, 2006 10:40PM

Hello webaim ...

I have been re-engineering a site ( http://aboutstone.org/ )that has been
around, not very accessibly, for a few years. Making it accessible has
required major hacks to http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/links/ and
some minor hacks on the source code of http://htdig.org/ and
http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/mhonarc.html

I would appreciate comments on how I've tackled the archives of an email
discussion list (entry page http://aboutstone.org/conversa/ ) which has
been unmoderated for most of its life.

Many of the problems seem intractable, especially quoting. The quoting
styles are variable, unpredictable and sometimes undetectable (eg:
indentation). Some subscribers are new to email, and format their messages
in very strange ways. That causes problems for everybody, and often the only
solution is subsequent hand-editing of the archived mailbox (possible
sometimes, but in general unsustainable).

Right now I'm filtering everything through a Perl script which can be
adapted to the idiosyncrasies of subscribers and their email clients, ending
(hopefully) with quoted text in a blockquote, eg:
http://aboutstone.org/conversa/arc012/msg00250.html
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work.
I'm wondering if anyone has a better method.

Also I'm concerned that that the message pages have too much navigation
clutter. Not a great problem for people who browse visually, but what is it
like for screenreader users?


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