blindness and top vs. bottom posting

[Ben Finney]

Tim Chase <python.list at tim.thechases.com> writes:

> > I am a member of another list that has at least one member who has
> > lost his vision, and reads his news with a speech generator.  It
> > is terribly inconvenient for him to follow a thread full of
> > 'bottom postings', as he is then forced to sit through the
> > previous message contents again and again in search of the new
> > content.
> 
> I'm involved on the Blind Linux users (Blinux) list, and they seem
> to have no problem bottom-posting.
> 
> There are a variety of tools for converting bottom-posting into more
> readable formats.  If you want to suppress comments, a quality MUA
> can suppress them.

The parent poster is complaining about a straw man. As they point out,
"bottom posting" is almost as bad as top posting. Both practices leave
the entire content of quoted material intact, regardless of which
parts are relevant.

The correct solution to both top posting *and* bottom posting is
"interleaved posting", but more importantly to trim away everything
except the quoted material necessary for giving context to one's
response. This is of even greater assistance to the blind, who then
have just the necessary context to understand the current message.

    <URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_posting>

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Ben Finney