[REQUEST] Tricky Old Timer Needs Help With Email Formatting

[G8racingfool]

Okay, this one outta stump ya'll for a bit.

Got a residential customer. The guy is 98 years old and still uses a computer every day and does more on it than most people half his age. He has a problem though; he has late-stage macular degeneration which means he can barely see things on the screen anymore I've got him set up with EoA settings and a Yellow-on-Blue color scheme that works well for him except in one, small case: Email.

The guy loves reading his email. He currently uses Outlook 2010 for email which works fairly well because it fits in with the Windows color scheme I've set up. However, because everybody needs to make email super fancy nowdays, he's getting a lot of emails with HTML formatting which is generally fine except; some email designers think it's a great idea to force a white background color on their emails but won't force a text color. As a result, we end up with a yellow-on-white email that's virtually impossible for me to read let alone him. My first thought was to disable content formatting in Outlook which takes care of the background alright. Problem there is, all of the nasty html, scripts and everything else are now displayed in plain text which means emails become a jumbled mess to read.

So far, I haven't found any other settings that will allow me to just turn off elements of email formatting without clearing all of it. So my question is: is there a way to force the background of all emails to be clear/non-existant or, if that's not an option, is there another email client that is more friendly to folks who can't hardly see? I told him I'd explore every avenue possible before giving up and saying it's just not do-able so if anyone here has any ideas throw them out here.

 

[Larry Sabo]

If all else fails, can he just select all the body with Ctrl+A so it's highlighted in blue? Does Ctrl+mouse wheel enlarge/shrink the text, like it does in Thunderbird? Worth a test, perhaps.

 

[NJW]

Would forcing plain-text work? See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/831607/how-to-view-all-e-mail-messages-in-plain-text-format

 

[G8racingfool]

Would forcing plain-text work? See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/831607/how-to-view-all-e-mail-messages-in-plain-text-format

Already tried that:

My first thought was to disable content formatting in Outlook which takes care of the background alright. Problem there is, all of the nasty html, scripts and everything else are now displayed in plain text which means emails become a jumbled mess to read.

I couldn't think of the proper setting name at the time so that's what I meant by "content formatting".

If all else fails, can he just select all the body with Ctrl+A so it's highlighted in blue? Does Ctrl+mouse wheel enlarge/shrink the text, like it does in Thunderbird? Worth a test, perhaps.

I'm not sure if it's a Windows 10 or Outlook 2010 thing, but since the text color is set to yellow in the Ease-of-Access Center it stays yellow even if you highlight it and the highlight background tends to be a screwy white-ish color so it doesn't really help at all. I don't recall that happening in any other application besides Outlook though so it may be isolated to that, I'll have to check.

 

[TurricanII]

Have Windows Screen Reader read it out?

Windows Magnifyer has option to invert colours that may help:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/11542/windows-use-magnifier

 

[Porthos]

If he can use and read the browser with your modifications how about webmail?

 

[NJW]

Problem there is, all of the nasty html, scripts and everything else are now displayed in plain text which means emails become a jumbled mess to read.

Presuming that you and Outlook have both done it the right way, in that case, there can be no plain-text version of the email and Outlook is showing the HTML source, which is not the same thing.

You can either get Outlook to strip the HTML tags or tell him to ask his correspondents to send proper multi-part messages. Good luck with any of that.

 

[G8racingfool]

Have Windows Screen Reader read it out?

Windows Magnifyer has option to invert colours that may help:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/11542/windows-use-magnifier

I've thought about the magnifier option but haven't attempted it yet. Seems like a lot of steps for him to go through for maybe 10% of his email. Simple, easy and consistent is what I'm shooting for. However I'll pocket this suggestion as a last resort.

If he can use and read the browser with your modifications how about webmail?

Email provider (ISP) doesn't have webmail access (I know) so no dice there.

Presuming that you and Outlook have both done it the right way, in that case, there can be no plain-text version of the email and Outlook is showing the HTML source, which is not the same thing.

You can either get Outlook to strip the HTML tags or tell him to ask his correspondents to send proper multi-part messages. Good luck with any of that.

That's exactly what it is doing because every single one of the problem emails are heavily reliant on HTML.

Stripping all of the tags out would be ideal but I've got no idea where to even begin with that as I'm guessing it'd take a custom add-in/script of some sort. You'd be amazed how many newsletter/marketing emails are not properly designed (if they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation).

After some additional searching I think I may be able to do what I want with Thunderbird, so now I need to see if it actually works with the Ease-of-Access settings.

 

[NJW]

Stripping all of the tags out would be ideal but I've got no idea where to even begin with that as I'm guessing it'd take a custom add-in/script of some sort. You'd be amazed how many newsletter/marketing emails are not properly designed (if they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation).

As a user of plain-text-only email, I know what it's like! You may want to have a look at this rule-based solution for Outlook. You'll need to refer to this page to restore the required functionality in Outlook 2010.

After some additional searching I think I may be able to do what I want with Thunderbird, so now I need to see if it actually works with the Ease-of-Access settings.

I was going to suggest Thunderbird, but that involves some relearning by your client, of course. In my brief research, there may be some difficulty forcing incoming message CSS in some circumstances, particularly with background colour. You could possibly do some sort of out of band processing if you set Thunderbird for maildir storage, which would provide easy access to individual messages, but the effort investment is going up rapidly.

 

[G8racingfool]

Quick update on this: I tried out Thunderbird on his system and I think it's going to work out swell for him. It was way easier for him to work with than Outlook so the learning curve won't be bad at all. Setting the messages to display as "Basic HTML" takes care of the issue with the backgrounds and about the only drawback is it appears to break images but I'm guessing it's a config setting I just haven't found yet so I'm still working on that part.

 

[NJW]

... it appears to break images ...

Remote content is disabled by default. Configure preferences – universal or site-specific – under Privacy -> Mail Content.

Glad to hear it's working.

 

[G8racingfool]

Remote content is disabled by default. Configure preferences – universal or site-specific – under Privacy -> Mail Content.

Glad to hear it's working.

Yea I tried that setting, unfortunately it doesn't work as apparently "Basic HTML" strips images out of the email intentionally. So I may be back to square one. Any other email clients out there (besides IncrediMail.... ugh) that allow for Thunderbird-style customization but don't block images?

 

[NJW]

So I may be back to square one.

There must be a Thunderbird extension that would help – at least, have a look. What about Colorific, for example?

I'd be nervous about allowing remote images by default.