Cannot Get Mail The mail server is not responding. Network error (POSIX 96).

If email is failing to send or receive, you are likely to see indicative errors at the bottom of the mail sidebar - the wording of the error usually providing sufficient information to determine the nature of the problem.

Deleting and re-adding your email account is sometimes the easiest way to resolve a problem with a specific Mail account. After deleting the account, perform a forced restart before re-adding the email account to your iPad.

• Delete account:

Settings > Mail > Accounts > [Your Mail Account] > Delete Account

• Force restart the iPad:

Force restart iPad - Apple Support

• Add Mail Account:

Settings > Mail > Add Account

Be aware that some email providers now require the use of App Specific Passwords when accessing mail over IMAP or POP3. If this applies to your email account, you will need to generate a unique password for your iPad email account - that will differ from your normal Account Password. As examples - AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft all use App Specific Passwords when using anything other than their own email client Apps.

If you need to generate an App Specific Password, you’ll need to log-in to your Mail Providers account management webpage - using a web browser - and generate the Password from the appropriate account security page.

More information about AOL’s App Specific Passwords can be found here:

https://help.aol.com/articles/allow-apps-that-use-less-secure-sign-in?guccounter=1

For Yahoo, more information can be found here:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN27791.html

Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/using-app-passwords-with-apps-that-don-t-support-two-step-verification-5896ed9b-4263-e681-128a-a6f2979a7944

Google Mail (Gmail) has until recently also used App Specific passwords to access email - although this has now been deprecated in favour of OAuth authentication. Simply removing and re-adding the Gmail account from the Add Account wizard, selecting Google and following the prompts, will correctly configure the correct account settings.

That's unfortunate - and might actually suggest that the problem is (at least in part) with your Mail Provider.

Others that have experienced a similar issue have completely cleared the problem by deleting and re-adding the offending Mail Account.

Perhaps understand the Apple Support Community is a user-to-user technical forum. Contributors here are all end-users, just like you. Other than the site Moderators, Apple neither monitor nor participate here. As such, if you hope to reach Apple through these forums, you will be disappointed. While contributors can offer advice and guidance, we do not represent Apple - and are unable to "fix" any underlying software issues.

Apple invites submission of constructive comments and bug reports via its Product Feedback portal. For iPad and iPadOS:

Feedback - iPad - Apple

If submitting a Bug Report, ensure that you include details of your iPad model and installed version of iPadOS within the body-text of your report. Don't rely upon the pick-list - as this rarely includes the current versions.

You are very welcome.

Have you actually tried following the suggested steps to address the problem? You might find your issue is fully resolved.