Accessible Email

Tips for getting your message to everyone

By Christina Clift
E-mail is an essential part of our everyday lives. We use it to send messages for both business and pleasure. We are bombarded with e-mails from businesses that we patron and some that are simply junk. 

For example, I receive lots of e-mails from businesses like Yankee Candle, Sam’s Club, Lyft, the NFB, business related messages, etc., but then there are those that once I read the subject line or sender that I automatically delete. As a person who is blind, I’ve had many positive experiences using this form of communication and some that were frustrating as hell. 

My interaction and level of frustration are normally aggravated by either a poorly communicated message or an inaccessible message. Some email are just junk, a message which should never have been sent in the first place. 

Email has only continued to flourish since the early 90’s and with more and more users and brands using it for business communications, it continues to be part of everyday life across all age groups. But, the question here is: Are they reaching their potential target group and most importantly are they accessible?  

What about the people who are blind?  How do people who have difficulties in hearing or understanding use your email?  Around 253 million people live with vision impairment worldwide, of which 36 million are blind and 217 million have moderate to severe vision impairment. 

There are close to 300 million people who are color blind. People with disabilities use the web and email as much as others, thanks to assistive technology and tools such as screen magnifiers, eye tracking systems, and advanced sip n puff devices. It is, therefore, necessary to design and code emails that everyone can receive and understand, regardless of any physical or cognitive disabilities. 

Email accessibility is the practice of designing your email content in such a way that it removes barriers for individuals with disabilities and lets them access, perceive and interact with the content. Accessible content is more readable, logical and more usable by everyone not just for people with disabilities. Good accessibility means good usability and good usability means good business.  

Here are some tips on how to BUILD and TEST your attractive yet accessible email design. Email designing and content plays a major role in making it accessible to everyone. To meet basic accessibility requirements, your email should have the following: 

 

• Maintain a Logical Reading Order - Establish a logical order and maintain a hierarchy of your email content. Irrespective of their screen size, your subscribers should be able to view the content of your email in a logical reading order. This will especially help people with cognitive disabilities and subscribers using screen readers. Also, a logical order will help users to pull out the key information quicker.
  
• Use Large and Readable Fonts - Keep visually challenged viewers in mind while setting the font style and size of your email. Fonts lesser than 14pt become hard to read on desktop or laptop screens. Keep the text evenly spaced and keep the size above 14pt so that it is easily readable. Minimize the use of multiple font styles and typefaces that make it appear condensed.
  
• Keep the Content Simple - Avoid flashy content and keep it as simple and short as possible. Get straight to the point and avoid using complicated layout and metaphors. Avoid justifying your copy and highlight the important areas of your message. 
  
• Use Enough White Space in your Copy - Reading paragraphs and heaps of content that are spaced together requires a lot of effort. It is important to give proper spacing to the text and create enough white space around the copy to make it easy to read. Set appropriate line heights to the text and add padding to the tables and images in your content. People who read your copy must be able to scan it.
  
• Use the Right Color Schemes - Complex colors can be confusing for those with color vision deficiencies. Consider how viewers perceive different colors and choose a color scheme accordingly. Use the right colors in email, maintaining the basic color arrangement of dark text on light backgrounds and light text on dark backgrounds to ensure the content is easily distinguishable.
  
• Include a Text-Only Option - Your emails should have both plain text and HTML options while signing up. While the HTML emails will load the images, the text-only email will load only the text and let the users read the email comfortably. A plain-text version of your email can be of help especially to those using screen readers since they provide only the core content of your emails.
  
• Make the Clickable Links Prominent - Keep the clickable links large and visible, especially for those who have issues in controlling a mouse with precision. Keep the link differentiated from the images and make sure the link text describes what’s in the link. Tell your readers what to expect from the link by writing contextual link text. Instead of just saying “Click Here,” make it more precise by saying “Click Here to View the Products!” or simply: “View the Products!”
  
• Keep the Email Design Responsive - Keep the design responsive so that it is compatible with mobile devices, screen readers, and all other major devices. Maintain proper text-to-image ratio and highlight the main message so that the message is conveyed clearly, irrespective of the device and email client in which the subscribers view it.
  
• Use Precise Subject Lines - The subject line is the first and the most critical attribute of your email. Keep the subject lines brief and to the point. The subject lines should give the subscribers clarity in knowing what’s inside your email. Clear subject lines not only make your emails easy to access but also improve the overall subscriber engagement. 
  
• Use Semantic Tags - Header elements in emails such as , and ensure hierarchy to subscribers using screen readers, who may not be able to scan through your emails otherwise. Instead of using style statements like bold text and colors, use semantic tags such as

  ,

  and that will identify and differentiate the important sections of your content.
  

• Use Proper Alt Text for Images - Include proper alt text for the images in your email to describe the image when a subscriber cannot view your images. Make sure the text clearly describes the image. Sending images will be invisible to blind readers. Make sure that you include a text alternative.

Attachments are also often included with e-mails. All of the work you did to make it accessible, can be undone by attaching inaccessible files to your message. 

For example, if you are sending a flyer about an upcoming event, you could put the same information in your message. Remembering of course, to describe any images. Also, you can let the recipient know there is an attachment in the e-mail by including it in the subject or body of the message. 

Finally, it’s important to ensure that file names of attached documents make since and match their intended purpose. So, instead of have an attached file labeled as “11142019.doc,” you could label it is “holiday flyer.”  

While it does not guarantee that they are 100 percent accessible, these tips will go a long way in getting you there. Unfortunately, differences in operating systems, advancement of assistive technology being used, and that every person’s needs for accessibility are unique to them thus, this will sometimes led to differing results. 

If you follow these simple steps you will be one step closer in ensuring that individuals with disabilities like me have a positive experience if we choose to read them. Now that you know how to create an accessible e-mail message, I look forward to a more positive experience the next time I open my inbox.