Email accessibility is an often overlooked necessity. Your marketing is most effective when every subscriber can easily read, understand, and interact with your message. But design choices that seem harmless, such as small text, poor color contrast, image-only promotions, or vague links, can make an email difficult or even impossible for some people to use.
Accessible email design considers subscribers with visual, physical, cognitive, and other disabilities, as well as people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers. Many accessibility practices also make emails easier for everyone to read, whether someone is viewing a message on a small phone, dealing with temporary vision limitations, or simply scanning a crowded inbox.
Building inclusivity into your email marketing process doesn’t necessarily require redesigning everything from scratch. A few thoughtful changes to your copy, images, colors, layout, and coding can significantly improve the subscriber experience.
What Does Email Accessibility Mean?
It’s simple: it means designing and writing emails so that as many people as possible can access, understand, and interact with the content.
For example, someone who is blind or has low vision may use a screen reader that reads the email aloud. Other subscribers may have difficulty distinguishing certain colors, selecting small buttons, processing complicated layouts, or reading small text. Accessible emails account for those different needs.
Accessibility goes beyond simply making an email look good. The underlying structure of the message also matters. Headings, alternative text, meaningful links, logical reading order, and properly structured HTML can help assistive technologies interpret the email correctly.
Ultimately, email accessibility is about removing unnecessary barriers between your subscriber and your message.
Why Is Email Accessibility Important?
It’s important because you may not actually be reaching everyone you’re sending to. Accessibility helps make your email campaigns available to a wider audience.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) notes that accessibility guidance can help people with blindness and low vision, hearing loss, limited movement, cognitive limitations, and other disabilities. Many of these practices can also improve usability for people without disabilities.
Better accessibility can also create a better overall customer experience. Clearer copy, readable fonts, prominent buttons, meaningful links, and simple layouts benefit virtually every subscriber.
Accessibility is also an increasingly important consideration for businesses’ digital communications. The US Department of Justice has emphasized that inaccessible digital content can prevent people with disabilities from receiving equal access to information and services.
Rather than treating accessibility as something to check at the end of an email campaign, marketers should consider it throughout the design, writing, development, and QA process.
Email Accessibility Standards and Guidelines
One of the most widely recognized accessibility standards is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, commonly known as WCAG, which was developed by the W3C and provides recommendations for making digital content more accessible. The current WCAG 2.2 guidelines are organized around four principles: content should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
WCAG was primarily designed for web content, so not every criterion translates perfectly to email. However, its principles provide a useful framework for evaluating email design, copy, imagery, links, contrast, and structure.
Marketers should also remember that accessibility laws and requirements can vary based on organization, industry, location, and the type of communication being sent. Accessibility guidance should therefore be incorporated alongside appropriate legal advice when compliance questions arise.
10 Email Accessibility Best Practices
You don’t have to completely change your marketing strategy to make your campaigns easier to use. Start with these 10 email accessibility best practices:
- Use descriptive subject lines. Make the purpose of the email immediately understandable.
- Include alt text for meaningful images. Subscribers using screen readers should be able to understand what an important image communicates.
- Use sufficient color contrast. Text should be clearly distinguishable from its background.
- Don’t communicate information through color alone. A subscriber who can’t distinguish certain colors should still understand the message.
- Use readable font sizes. Avoid forcing subscribers to zoom in just to read your copy.
- Create a clear hierarchy. Headings and subheadings help readers quickly understand and navigate content.
- Write meaningful links. Instead of repeatedly using “click here,” tell readers where the link leads.
- Make buttons easy to select. Give calls to action enough size and surrounding space for people using touchscreens or those with limited dexterity.
- Maintain a logical reading order. Content should still make sense when read sequentially by assistive technology.
- Keep layouts simple. Overly complicated designs can create unnecessary reading and navigation difficulties.
W3C accessibility guidance similarly recommends meaningful links, clear headings, text alternatives for images, concise writing, structured markup, and a logical reading order.
How to Make Images Accessible
Images are an important part of email marketing, but problems arise when essential information is available only within an image. Imagine sending a sale announcement containing a graphic that says this:
Summer Sale—25% Off Everything Through Sunday
If none of that information exists as HTML or alternative text, a subscriber using a screen reader may miss the promotion entirely. Whenever an image communicates meaningful information, include descriptive alt text to explain the purpose or essential content of the image rather than simply describing every visual detail.
Here’s an example of good and bad alt text.
- Poor alt text: “Woman wearing shirt.”
- Better alt text: “Shop our new collection of lightweight summer tops.”
Also, avoid creating emails that consist entirely of images. Important headlines, product information, pricing, promotional details, and calls to action should ideally be available as live text whenever possible.
How to Make Email Copy More Accessible
Accessible writing starts with clarity. You should always keep these in mind:
- Keep sentences relatively short and paragraphs manageable.
- Use familiar words instead of unnecessarily complicated terminology.
- Break longer emails into clearly labeled sections so readers can quickly find the information they need.
Links should also make sense on their own. Instead of “Click Here,” try including “View the Summer Collection.” The reader will then understand what to expect.
Likewise, CTA buttons should clearly communicate what happens after someone selects them. “Shop New Colors,” “Reserve Your Seat,” or “Download the Guide” provides more context than a generic “Learn More.”
Clear copy improves accessibility while also supporting good email marketing. Subscribers rarely read every word of a promotional message, so making content scannable benefits everyone.
The Colors of Your Email Matter
Your brand’s color palette may look beautiful, but it also needs to be readable. Low contrast is one of the easiest email accessibility problems to accidentally introduce. Light gray text against white, pastel text over a pale background, or text layered over a busy photograph can all be difficult to read.
Color also shouldn’t be the only way you communicate meaning. For example, imagine an event calendar where available dates are shown in green and unavailable dates are shown in red. Someone who has difficulty distinguishing those colors might not be able to tell which dates are available. To solve for this, add another visual indicator, such as text, icons, patterns, or labels.
Pay special attention to these elements:
- Body copy
- Headlines
- Buttons
- Links
- Text placed over photographs
- Promotional banners
- Footer copy
A contrast-checking tool can help identify combinations that may be difficult for some subscribers to distinguish.
Mobile Email Accessibility
Email accessibility becomes especially important on mobile devices. Small screens magnify problems with tiny fonts, tightly packed links, complicated columns, and miniature buttons. Since subscribers often interact with emails using their fingers rather than a mouse, clickable elements need adequate space around them.
To solve for these potential issues on mobile, you should implement the following:
- Use responsive email templates that adapt to different screen sizes.
- Keep body copy comfortably readable without requiring users to zoom.
- Ensure buttons are large enough to tap easily, with enough spacing to prevent someone from accidentally selecting the wrong link.
You can also consider simplifying multi-column layouts on mobile as well. A complex desktop design may become confusing when content stacks vertically.
Importantly, it’s best practice to test it on several screen sizes and email clients whenever possible. That way, you can catch any issues before a campaign hits inboxes.
Email Accessibility Checklist
Before hitting send, add accessibility to your normal email QA process. Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself:
- Does every meaningful image have appropriate alt text?
- Can important information still be understood if images don’t load?
- Is the font easy to read?
- Is there enough contrast between text and its background?
- Does the email use headings in a logical order?
- Do links clearly describe where they lead?
- Are CTA buttons easy to see and select?
- Does the content follow a logical reading order?
- Is color being used as the only way to communicate information?
- Does the email work well on mobile devices?
- Is the copy concise and easy to understand?
- Have you tested the email using accessibility tools or assistive technology when appropriate?
Accessibility should become another standard part of QA alongside checking spelling, links, personalization, rendering, and tracking.
Create More Inclusivity
Email accessibility isn’t simply about checking a compliance box. It’s about creating emails that more subscribers can comfortably read, understand, and act on.
Start with the fundamentals: use meaningful alt text, readable fonts, sufficient color contrast, clear copy, descriptive links, simple layouts, properly sized buttons, and mobile-friendly design. Then incorporate accessibility checks into your regular email development and QA process.
Small improvements can make a meaningful difference. And in many cases, the same practices that make email more accessible also make it clearer, easier to scan, and more enjoyable for your entire audience.
When emails are designed with accessibility in mind from the beginning, inclusive communication becomes a standard part of good email marketing—not an afterthought.
If you need help creating more accessible emails for your business, we can help. Having a team of experts, like the ones at Email Broadcast, create optimized templates that incorporate accessibility best practices can give you peace of mind. Let’s chat.
