B On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 02:37:36PM +0200, Roger Price wrote: > I have been told by the elderly president of a club I belong to that when I > write on the club's mailing list, it must be in blue. I would like to do this > without using HTML. I use alpine to send and receive email : I tried adding > the > ASCII codes that produce colored text in a X terminal, for example the > command > echo -e "This is a test of \e[3;91m italic red \e[0m ", but they are ignored > in > an e-mail message body. > > Is there some way of producing colored text without using HTML ? >
Hi Roger, He didn't specify *which* blue. I'd suggest using HTML and setting, say, foreground as #d1edf2 and background as #95b9db.[Crayola pale blue and Fabric Creations Pale Blue from Encycolorpedia - both found by searching "pale blue RGB" in Google]. This is malicious compliance, but one of those is fairly close to "well-known large American computer company" blue. When he complains that he can't read it, point out that mandating specific colours goes against making email accessible to others. Also point out that blue text in HTML is often used for web links and that some people would find this difficult to distinguish meaningfully. You might also want to try a colour contrast test for light blue on white: the ratio should be at least 4.5:1 per the W3C WCAG 2.2 guidelines for web pages, for example. [And https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/quickref/#text-alternatives - Colour should not used as the only means of conveying information] For the avoidance of doubt as to why I should care: I spend time at $dayjob working on accessibility and and accessibility documentation. All the very best, as ever Andy > Roger > > https://useplaintext.email/ >
