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Thread: Quoting previous emails
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: deblist@suberic.net
Date: Mon, Dec 07 2009 5:48PM
Subject: Quoting previous emails
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Preceding quoted text with greater than signs is standard in many
email programs. The best way to do it, bar none, is for the
person replying to only leave in the text to which they are
directly replying which is necessary for context. However, this
is a pain to do, and most people leave in the entire body of the
previous thread without any editing. (I admit when I am low on
spoons I will do that myself.)
If you remove the greater than signs but leave in the quoted
text, then it is impossible for sighted users to know what text
is quoted and what is new. Some people try other indicators
(indenting the quoted text, or turning it blue, for example) but
that is invisible in many email programs (including mine) and
probably invisible to screenreaders.
Is there a standard way of indicating quotations in lists with
many blind users? I admit, I just assumed JAWS would know the
greater-than-sybol standard and adjust tone to match. We can
always use prose (eg. Geoff said "This is a pain" and Andrew
responded "You're right, it is"), but anything that's too
high-maintenance is something people won't do consistently.
-deborah
From: ckrugman@sbcglobal.net
Date: Tue, Dec 08 2009 12:18AM
Subject: Re: Quoting previous emails
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When punctuation settings are set in JAWS to"Read all" it will identify
quotes. The > signs are generally put in by the email programs and JAWS
reads each > sign.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 4:42 PM
Subject: [WebAIM] Quoting previous emails
> Preceding quoted text with greater than signs is standard in many
> email programs. The best way to do it, bar none, is for the
> person replying to only leave in the text to which they are
> directly replying which is necessary for context. However, this
> is a pain to do, and most people leave in the entire body of the
> previous thread without any editing. (I admit when I am low on
> spoons I will do that myself.)
>
> If you remove the greater than signs but leave in the quoted
> text, then it is impossible for sighted users to know what text
> is quoted and what is new. Some people try other indicators
> (indenting the quoted text, or turning it blue, for example) but
> that is invisible in many email programs (including mine) and
> probably invisible to screenreaders.
>
> Is there a standard way of indicating quotations in lists with
> many blind users? I admit, I just assumed JAWS would know the
> greater-than-sybol standard and adjust tone to match. We can
> always use prose (eg. Geoff said "This is a pain" and Andrew
> responded "You're right, it is"), but anything that's too
> high-maintenance is something people won't do consistently.
>
> -deborah
>
From: Jared Smith
Date: Tue, Dec 08 2009 6:42AM
Subject: Re: Quoting previous emails
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On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:16 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> When punctuation settings are set in JAWS to"Read all" it will identify
> quotes. The > signs are generally put in by the email programs and JAWS
> reads each > sign.
And this is unfortunate. A much better behavior would be for screen
readers to identify sections that begin with > and simply read "Begin
quote" at the beginning and "End quote" at the end, and then ignore
all of the >'s in between. I suppose a good, accessible e-mail client
could do the same thing. And all e-mail clients should function like
Gmail, which hides long quoted sections of messages that don't appear
to be relevant to the conversation (e.g., anything repeated below a
top-posting).
I do find it interesting that nobody has yet to figure this out
despite the fact that e-mail is about the longest lasting form of
online communication we have. It's not going away any time soon
either, so isn't it about time someone figure out a reasonable
solution to the e-mail quoting issue? It's not a complicated issue to
solve.
Jared Smith
WebAIM
From: Randi
Date: Tue, Dec 08 2009 7:45AM
Subject: Re: Quoting previous emails
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Voiceover doesn't say any of those characters at all. It must be my
punctuation setting, but I had no idea those characters were even in
the email. I use Gmail, but I have it go through my mail program. I'm
going to check it out and see if it'll hide all quoted messages.
~Randi
One Day at a Time
From: ckrugman@sbcglobal.net
Date: Tue, Dec 08 2009 7:48AM
Subject: Re: Quoting previous emails
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There are programs that will clean up the emails that contain the > signs
and other unnecessary attributes when forwarding an email e.g. Email
stripper so the technology is out there. In this and similar programs the
email is copied and pasted in to the cleaning program edited and then copied
and pasted back in to a new cleaned up email for sending. Generally these
programs are freeware.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jared Smith" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 5:40 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Quoting previous emails
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:16 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>> When punctuation settings are set in JAWS to"Read all" it will identify
>> quotes. The > signs are generally put in by the email programs and JAWS
>> reads each > sign.
>
> And this is unfortunate. A much better behavior would be for screen
> readers to identify sections that begin with > and simply read "Begin
> quote" at the beginning and "End quote" at the end, and then ignore
> all of the >'s in between. I suppose a good, accessible e-mail client
> could do the same thing. And all e-mail clients should function like
> Gmail, which hides long quoted sections of messages that don't appear
> to be relevant to the conversation (e.g., anything repeated below a
> top-posting).
>
> I do find it interesting that nobody has yet to figure this out
> despite the fact that e-mail is about the longest lasting form of
> online communication we have. It's not going away any time soon
> either, so isn't it about time someone figure out a reasonable
> solution to the e-mail quoting issue? It's not a complicated issue to
> solve.
>
> Jared Smith
> WebAIM
>