On Wed, 2 Sep 2009 21:13:09 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , "dennis@home"
writes:
Brian is blind and uses a screen reader of some sort.

Bottom posting is a problem when used with a screen reader as it is
difficult to find the content.

. I'm puzzled as to how, and I'm sitting in a household belonging to two
screenreader users as I type this. ..

Sometimes it is difficult using a screen reader to work out where the
various posters have said what. This mainly is due to the MUA
software not allowing the user to arrow through a message in the
traditional sense - if for example in OE or the default mode in Agent,
if you use the arrow keys to move through a post, you aren't actually
moving the cursor up/down, but scrolling the whole window. In Outlook
Express at least, the screen reader historically just used to read
everything out to the user automatically. Imagine that reading mode
with interleaved quoting - there is an immediate issue as you are
trying to remember exactly how deep specific quotes are, plus the
readout is broken up by repetition of symbols being read out.

Some screen readers will truncate the echo of the symbol - either
due to a user defined dictionary file which stops the speaking of the
character in these situations, or because there are many symbols (in
the case of a long post where someone has commented at the bottom).
On my screen reader for instance, if there are more than 3 consecutive
symbols in a row, the reader will just read the first 2 and skip the
rest.

In the case where there are many varied quoting styles used in a
group, it may not be obvious to someone with no sight (remember that
most software differentiates quoting and non quoting with different
colours) where exactly they need to focus their attentions. This can
sometimes slow the reader down considerably.

After saying all that, I find that with the limited sight I do
actually have, I prefer reading/posting to Usenet using my ancient
Agent 1.93 (later versions cause issues with screen readers) using
interleaved quoting. However, such programs as Outlook (which I use
for email at work and have recently moved to this at home for
convenience sake) makes this horribly difficult for *anyone*, and so I
have taken to top posting for email correspondence (specifically
blindness related email lists).

I feel that it is good etiquette to follow the pattern of the majority
in the group/list to which you are subscribing. Thus, it is probably
bad etiquette to post using interleaved quoting in a blindness related
email list where everyone else top posts for the same reason that it
is bad etiquette to post in a Usenet group where everyone else uses
interleaved quoting.

Thanks.
Andrew.