Email accessibility is an important consideration for marketers because it ensures that all subscribers can understand and use your content. Fortunately, many small changes can make your emails more accessible to people with disabilities.

Be sure to include descriptive alt text for images and ensure that any important information is clearly readable. Also, be mindful of the way you structure your content.

Color

Over 2.2 billion people in the world live with visual impairments. The same goes for those with hearing loss and physical challenges. That’s why it’s important for marketers to ensure email accessibility. Incorporating design best practices that include proper color contrast, legible fonts and straightforwardly descriptive calls-to-action are just some of the ways you can make your email campaigns more accessible for all subscribers.

However, before you start to think about scratching color and design altogether to be more compliant, hold up! You can still create engaging campaigns that are ADA-compliant without having to lose your brand identity. It just requires a little bit of extra effort on your part. To get started, you’ll want to look into email accessibility guidelines, which are essentially tried and true design fundamentals like organization, logical reading order, white space, and font styling.

Additionally, keep in mind that a good rule of thumb for color is to make sure your text and background colors are at least 4.5:1 in contrast, says Emails Nest. This ensures your email will be readable by anyone with vision impairments. If you’re unsure whether your email is properly contrasting, there are free online tools that can help.

Another aspect to consider is the use of clear hierarchy. Many visual impairments and situational factors (like time constraints or distractions) can impede someone from quickly decoding long passages of text. To avoid this, use headers and subheaders to establish a structure, and try to keep paragraphs to a maximum of three sentences each.

Additionally, it’s also a good idea to use a sans-serif font with a generous point size. This ensures that your emails will be easy to read on all platforms, including mobile devices. Finally, if your email contains images, be sure to provide alt text. This will allow your subscribers to still access the content of your campaign even if they choose to turn off or disable images in their email client. This can be especially helpful for those with limited internet connectivity or low-bandwidth environments.

Fonts

If you’re using an email template that includes a table, it’s important to make sure your tables are accessible. A table’s role attribute should be set to “presentation.” This will allow screen readers to interpret the tables’ content as a list rather than displaying each cell as a unique paragraph.

The Americans with Disabilities Act states that fonts should be at least 14 points and resizable so that all subscribers can comfortably read your email. For those with limited vision, it’s important to choose a sans serif font that is easily legible and not too condensed. Adding padding to the left and right of your text blocks will also help.

Color can convey important information, but it should never be the only way to communicate a message. People with color blindness might not be able to differentiate between some colors, so always use a high contrast ratio when pairing background and foreground elements. Also, ensure all of your images are provided with alt text. People who are blind or have other visual impairments will be unable to see the information on your images without this alternative text.

While it may seem like a hassle, ensuring that your digital newsletter is accessible to all of your subscribers is an essential part of your email marketing. After all, 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some type of disability—and you won’t be reaching them if your emails are inaccessible.

Fortunately, email accessibility doesn’t require major changes to your existing email template. It simply means you need to take the time to test and tweak a few key aspects of your digital newsletter. In addition to following ADA standards, you should consider using a style guide or automated color contrast checkers. By putting yourself in your subscriber’s shoes and thinking about what they might need from your email, you can create a more accessible email that everyone will enjoy reading. This will help to build stronger relationships with your audience, drive more conversions, and increase revenue.

Images

In addition to color and fonts, email images can add a great deal to an email’s message, but they also present challenges for people with visual or motor impairments. Adding text descriptions to image content and ensuring that all links are descriptive and clearly indicate their destination can help make your emails more accessible for these subscribers.

Emails should also be designed to support keyboard navigation and use of assistive technologies. This means avoiding complex or cluttered layouts, ensuring that email elements are tagged appropriately for screen readers and keyboard shortcuts, and using focus styles to ensure that interactive elements can be highlighted with the tab key. It is also important to avoid using images as the sole means of conveying a brand’s message, as many subscribers may have their images disabled in email clients or prefer to view text-only versions of emails.

Finally, email designers should prioritize clarity and legibility over design aesthetics. Avoid using light-colored text on a white background and be careful with color combinations that can affect readability (such as blue on white or red on green). Keep in mind that a high level of contrast between the background and foreground colors can also contribute to poor readability. And while a bold font can be used for emphasis, it should be carefully considered to be sure that it isn’t too bold and could interfere with readability.

Emails should also be well-designed for use on mobile devices and touch screens. This includes ensuring that buttons and links are large enough to be easily clicked with thumbs or fingers, especially on mobile devices. In addition, all emails should be fully navigable via keyboard shortcuts for users who don’t use a mouse or who have motor impairments that limit their ability to control one. This can be accomplished by providing a skip navigation link at the start of the email that directs the user to the most important content in the email, or using a tab key focus style to highlight interactive elements when they are receiving keyboard input.

Linking

As you may know, there are many people in the world who have visual or physical disabilities that can prevent them from accessing certain content. By focusing on accessibility, marketers can create emails that are more user-friendly for all. This demonstrates empathy for your audience and can increase customer loyalty and trust. Email accessibility also complies with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines and reflects a professional image.

Semantic HTML code is crucial to the overall accessibility of your email content. It establishes a clear structure and hierarchy for your content, making it easier for users of assistive technologies to interpret and understand the information in your email. For example, using heading tags to distinguish hierarchy and meaning, and using the paragraph tag to break up large blocks of text allows screen readers to better compartmentalize your content into digestible chunks. It is also important to use a consistent style for your hyperlinks, navigation, and contact information.

Lastly, leave plenty of white space in your email to ensure that texts and images don’t get too close together. This is not only good for readability, but it can be a deterrent to those who use screen readers as it makes it difficult for them to discern what they’re reading.

In addition to these best practices, make sure that you are using clear language in your email copy. This means not shying away from difficult topics or weighty subjects, but rather writing in a way that is clear and concise for your audience. Also, make sure that you are using adequate font sizes for a comfortable viewing experience across devices. This is especially important for mobile users, as email on smaller screens tends to be viewed at a lower resolution.

The final piece of the email accessibility puzzle is ensuring that you have proper alt text for your images. This is the description that is read aloud by screen reader software and is necessary to describe the context and purpose of your images. You should also avoid using images for decorative purposes such as page dividers or brand graphics that don’t contribute to the overall story of your email.