Configuring text size and the preference of light mode / dark mode is pretty much universal – even Microsoft Windows has added support for this at some level. It’s been baked into most mobile systems for many years, and Linux for over a decade. And yet we are still writing emails using HTML formatting as though how we (the sender) know best how the recipient should see the content.

But it’s about inclusivity‽

I recently attended a workshop about how to make a more inclusive workplace – and we left with a few action points recommended. The presentation recommended that we should send all our emails at a larger point size…

You read that right – they did not recommend that IT departments ensure that systems can be configured for the users reading needs, or that the software they purchase all follows such configuration – no the onus was put on the sender of the email! So without knowing the preference of the people reading the email it is recommended that we change how everyone will see our content rendered.

I took a different thing from that suggested action – people don’t understand that sometimes more technology is not the answer. In this case we have put in place the source of the problem. When email was plain text it was always rendered at the right size (matching the OS settings). But it could not include formatting instructions. As HTML email became richer and more pervasive we actually made this problem worse. I wonder how many people yearn for the good old days 😉.

What can we do?

So instead let’s use a system that is designed to solve the problem at hand – adding semantic meaning to text we transmit. Markdown is, in my mind, the best suited solution to this problem – it is rendered faster, the content is much leaner to download, and it actually renders using the local visual settings instead of enforcing sender preferences.

You can read loads more about this on my markdown email page :).