How to make your emails accessible

Imagine crafting the perfect email campaign, only to find that a significant portion of your subscribers can't fully engage with it. Accessibility is often overlooked, unintentionally excluding subscribers with disabilities from enjoying your content. After all, an email that works perfectly for someone using a desktop computer with a mouse might present significant challenges for someone navigating via keyboard shortcuts or screen reader software.

Why does it matter?

Accessibility in email is the practice of designing emails that can be understood and used by everyone, regardless of ability or disability. This includes ensuring that people with disabilities, or those relying on assistive technologies, can fully understand and engage with all elements of your email.

Besides being best practice, accessibility is also a legal requirement in some regions. Laws like the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and the Equality Act mandate that digital products, including emails, are designed to be usable and engaging for everyone. Email is one of the most widely used forms of communication today, both personally and professionally. With around 15% of the world population living with a disability, prioritising accessibility isn't just the right thing to do – it's also a smart move that improves the experience for all your subscribers.

Types of disabilities to consider in email marketing

As a visual medium, email relies on its design, content, and coding. If people have trouble viewing, reading, clicking on, or understanding your email campaigns, they won't take the actions you expect. It's important to consider common disabilities like visual, hearing, and physical impairments, as well as speech difficulties, temporary limitations, or even environmental factors (like forgetting glasses!). We also have to remember to ensure screen reader accessibility for those with visual challenges.

Accessible email copywriting also helps people with cognitive, neurological, and auditory disabilities – including dyslexia, autism, ADHD, epilepsy, stroke survivors, and many more. This is why accessibility isn't just about the design of your emails. It's about clear, readable copy that both your recipients and assistive technologies can understand without issues.

Best practices – design

Your email's design and content should follow the same universal rules to make them accessible: follow a simple, logical, and hierarchical structure, use proper contrast for text and images, and break your email into smaller sections for clarity.

A couple of things to consider when designing your email:

Always provide alt text for your images: Its purpose is to describe images and graphics online in case the image itself is not visible (this includes GIFs). If an image represents something meaningful to your readers, write a concise, short description of it. For example: "Staircase with decorative stained glass". If your image is purely decorative, like a divider, swirl, or pattern, it's better not to provide alt text for it.
Use proper contrast in your design: If the contrast is insufficient, recipients with colour blindness might struggle to see text or other content. Use high contrast for text and background colours to ensure that important elements, like an unsubscribe link, are clearly visible. Using WebAIM's contrast checker or the Coolors checker can be handy here.
Avoid flashing or fast-moving GIFs/animations: These can cause harm or photosensitive seizures for some recipients.
Insert clickable links with a clear purpose: Instead of inserting hyperlinks, use buttons. Make button labels descriptive, e.g., "Click here to view the collection" instead of just "Click here" so recipients know where it will take them.
Keep content minimal and structured: Maintain a simple, clean design. The best text-to-image ratio for accessibility is 60/40, with at least 60% of the content being text and no more than 40% being images. Split text into sections and avoid overly long content – some email providers might clip your emails. Single-column layouts work well with many assistive devices, so you might want to opt for those.
Test against dark mode: Some recipients use dark mode to reduce eye strain. Dark mode automatically adjusts your email to the dark colour scheme, which may invert your intended design. Change the colours of your design if necessary.
Avoid all-image emails: Some email clients block images by default, which can prevent recipients from seeing your content. Never place important information only inside images – always use live text.

Best practices – writing

While design is important, your subscribers also need to be able to read your campaigns easily. Writing content with accessibility in mind makes your email copy clearer and more engaging for all readers, not only for those with disabilities.

What to keep in mind when writing your email copy:

Make your copy scanable: Use larger font sizes (bigger than 14px), web-safe fonts, and headings to break down your email into sections.
Adjust line spacing: Letters and lines that are too close together can reduce readability. Aim for spacing between 1.5 and 2.
Keep sentences simple and clear: Write short, clear sentences without jargon or slang.
Use bullet points and numbered lists: Break up content to improve readability and make paragraphs easier to scan.
Add padding around text: Additional padding moves your copy away from the edges of your campaign and gives it space to "breathe".
Avoid justified text: Stick with left-aligned text for better readability.
Use bold and italics sparingly: Apply only for emphasis, not as the sole way to convey important information. Avoid using all caps, which can be difficult to read.
Be mindful of emojis: Emojis can be tricky for screen readers. Using them sparingly and placing them at the end of a sentence is fine. But in a sentence like "We 👏 love 👏 email! 👏", it would be read out as "We clapping hands love clapping hands email! clapping hands" – which can be confusing for recipients using assistive devices.

Testing your email with accessibility in mind

Some reports found that nearly 40% of marketers don't use accessibility testing tools before launching an email campaign. That's a missed opportunity – testing is an essential step in email marketing, whether it's A/B testing subject lines, checking design across clients, or ensuring accessibility.

If you code your own emails, tools like Accessible Email can help you identify potential accessibility issues in your code. Platforms such as Litmus and Email on Acid also offer built-in accessibility testing, allowing you to make improvements before you send your final campaign. With EmailOctopus, you can create a seed list of your own email addresses to test how your campaign looks and performs across different inboxes.