What is the best email quoting for blind users?

M. Fioretti mfioretti at mclink.it
Thu Jun 1 10:19:32 UTC 2006


Greetings,

besides this mailing list, I also lurk on an italian one focused on
web and internet accessibility. Some subscribers there told me that
the only right (accessibility-wise) way of quoting email is to remove,
or not add, all the "greater than" signs at the beginning of each line.

In other words, instead of:

>Marco wrote:
>> I want to know something

one is supposed to format quotes in this way:

Marco wrote:
I want to know something

...even if it breaks replies markup in all the email clients I know
of, is not written in any netiquette guide I ever read and, basically,
makes much, much harder to figure out who answered to who in long
email threads.

As far as I remember, I have never encountered this other "quoting" on
this list. Therefore, I'd like to ask:

* is it true that no screen reader can handle traditional email 
  quoting, with all "greater than" signs appended at the beginning of
  each line? Are such messages really harder to read for blind users?

* if this is a problem, how come the other rule is not followed on
  this list?

Thank you in advance for any feedback,

	Marco

-- 
Marco Fioretti                    mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 5 for low memory      http://www.rule-project.org/

We need to focus on how to be productive, not just active.
        Scott McNealy, chairman, CEO, and cofounders, Sun Microsystems.




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