Guide to Accessibility in Email Marketing | eNudge®

Despite the prevalence of disability and physical or cognitive impairment, people with disabilities are often overlooked and underserved by current technology and digital products. Some of the daily challenges include:

Screen‑reading software may not be able to interpret information or links presented in graphical or “image‑only” format.
Content provided only in audio won't be accessible to Deaf people or those with certain hearing impairments unless a text alternative is provided.
While users can control many aspects of colour, size and typeface, some approaches to text or colour make access difficult or impossible for people with low vision (and, in some cases, for many other users too).

Types of disability and impairment

The range of physical and cognitive impairments affecting many people is often grouped into:

Visual — blindness, reduced vision, colour‑blindness, sensitivity to low contrast.
Hearing — deafness or hard of hearing.
Motor.
Cognitive.

The case for accessible email marketing

Some thought‑provoking statistics: over 1 billion people are estimated to live with some form of disability — about 15% of the world's population (WHO, 2020). And 1 in 6 Australians are estimated to have disability, or about 4.4 million people (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2020). That's a lot of people. Investing in accessible email marketing matters because:

It helps you reach more people. Accessible emails reach everyone on your list, including those with permanent disabilities or temporary impairments. If your emails aren't accessible, you automatically exclude a subset of your audience.
It increases engagement and retention. If subscribers can't read your content or interact with your calls to action, they can't engage — and are less likely to stay subscribed.
It extends access to voice‑assistant users (Siri, Alexa, Google Home), whose numbers are rising.
It reflects well on your brand by showing that you care.
Some industries are subject to accessibility legislation — healthcare, government, higher education and finance. In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 requires government agencies to ensure information and services are provided in a non‑discriminatory, accessible manner, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a widely referenced framework.

Your message

Writing your message so it's easy to read and understand is one of the simplest ways to improve accessibility.

Keep it clear and concise. According to Litmus, the average attention span in email is just 13.4 seconds.
Break long sentences into shorter, unambiguous ones.
Avoid jargon and complex words in favour of clear language and simpler synonyms.

The Flesch Reading Ease test is useful for assessing readability — the higher the score, the easier to read. Litmus suggests aiming for a score of 60–70, “plain English easily understood by 13–15 year old students”, for most marketing copy.

Design

Email design is one part of marketing where a few practices go a long way:

Animation can elevate design, but creates significant distraction for those with cognitive impairments.
Avoid image‑heavy emails — incorporate actual text (rather than text baked into images), so screen readers can read it.
Use appropriate colour contrast — free tools like the WebAIM Contrast Checker help.
Use appropriate font sizes — we recommend a minimum of 14px for better reading on desktop and mobile.
Use appropriate line spacing — the W3C suggests between 1.5 and 2, rather than single spacing.
Create strong visual and structural hierarchy with headings, paragraphs, white space and clear calls to action, so time‑poor or cognitively impaired readers can scan with ease.
Avoid centre‑aligned paragraphs — left‑justify your content, which especially helps readers with dyslexia.
Underline text links — this helps people with colour‑blindness identify them.
Give calls to action and buttons large touch targets, and use hover effects so colour‑blind readers can identify clickable links.
Follow a simple, single‑column layout — multiple columns add visual complexity and are harder to adapt across screen sizes.

Code

Improving the code behind your campaign is key to optimising for assistive technology like screen readers.

Use semantic HTML — this helps screen readers understand your content (and is good for SEO). A screen reader interprets <h1> as the most important heading, <h2> as a sub‑heading, and text in a <p> as a paragraph:
```
<h1> Heading </h1>
<h2> Sub-heading </h2>
<p> Body of text elaborating on the section </p>
```
Structuring headings and paragraphs this way also lets keyboard navigation jump from section to section.
Specify a language attribute — when a screen reader encounters it, it switches to that language profile for correct pronunciation and accents, e.g. <html lang="en">. In the eNudge drag‑and‑drop editor, set the language in the Settings tab for your campaign.
Specify a title attribute for your email — also set in the Settings tab of the eNudge editor.
Use alt text to explain images — screen readers verbalise the alt text since they can't “read” the image, letting vision‑impaired subscribers consume your visual content. Distinguish informative images from decorative ones; leave alt text empty for purely decorative images.
Set table roles to “presentation” so screen readers read your email sensibly instead of announcing layout markup: <table role="presentation">.
Set button roles to “button” so a screen reader knows an element is interactive: <div role="button"> Click here to read more </div>.

More tools and resources

Web accessibility is a vast, constantly growing topic. These tools and resources will help you assess your campaigns:

Email Accessibility Checker — check your email HTML for accessibility issues.
W3C's Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools list — tools and online services to check your content against the guidelines.
WAVE — run the browser version of your email through this to identify issues.
Apple Vision Resource — tools and apps to test accessibility for Mac users.
WCAG Overview.
ARIA — a W3C spec that adds descriptive information to HTML elements to improve the screen‑reader experience.

If you'd like a hand making your eNudge campaigns more accessible, get in touch.