Creating Accessible Emails: A Guide For Marketers and Journalists

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The digital world, like the physical one, can be rife with accessibility issues. IRL, we may more easily recognize the need for wheelchair ramps, parking spaces, and reserved seating in movie theaters, but accessibility online is too often an afterthought. That’s a mistake, because while website accessibility requirements in the U.S. are still limited to federal websites, those standards will likely proliferate over time. 

Disability advocates have argued that inaccessible spaces are a design problem, not a people problem. Beyond the moral responsibility of allowing citizens with disabilities to access their public and commercial spaces, accessibility changes make these spaces more accommodating to everyone. Curb ramps on streets and elevators help wheelchair users, but also kids on bikes, workers wheeling goods on dollies, and parents pushing strollers. 

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This argument applies online as well. The digital world is often particularly important to people with limited mobility. Here too, accessibility measures can enable more people to participate in online life. A screen reader can help both a person with low vision and a pre-reading child. Making emails accessible, whether as a marketer, journalist, or content creator, is increasingly table stakes in the online marketplace. 

There are several content-related and technical ways to make that happen, but first it’s helpful to fully understand the scale of this need.

Why Email Accessibility Is Important

People spend a lot of time in their inbox. It’s one of the most-frequented digital spaces. According to a 2019 study by Adobe, people spent an average of five hours a day on email — three for work and two for personal emails. Journalists and news organizations are increasingly relying on email newsletters to grow and engage their audiences around the world. For marketers, email remains one of the most valuable channels around. According to Litmus, marketers average a return of 36:1 on email marketing. And a study from The Radicati Group predicts that there will be over 4.2 billion email users by the end of 2022. That’s over half the world’s population.

In addition, more people will need accessibility accommodations. These can be lifelong conditions or ones that are aged into over time — think declining vision and hearing among older adults. The United Nations cites aging as one of its global issues, with the population aged 65 and older being the fastest-growing group, many of whom are at risk for age-related disabilities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of people in the U.S. with vision impairments is expected to double to over 25 million by 2050.

A large percentage of the population has differing abilities that make interacting with email challenging. The Dyslexia Center of Utah estimates that 15-20% of the population has a learning disability, with dyslexia being the most common. It’s our job as marketers and content creators (and humans) to make emails that are easier for people to use. If karma isn’t a good enough reason, just remember the ROI stat and think about how much more money your business could make if you create emails that more people can use. 

Hopefully, I’ve made a good argument for why email accessibility matters. But now you’re probably wondering, “What is email accessibility?” 

A good working definition of accessibility is the ability to access, use, and benefit from something. For wheelchair users, ramps allow them to access, use, and benefit from shops, libraries, homes, etc. For email subscribers, accessible emails allow them to access and use the information in an email and benefit from the content in their inbox. 

While there are underlying technical aspects to accessibility — the Web Accessibility Initiative has a thorough guide to accessibility standards, if you want to dive in deeper — there are two areas that greatly impact email accessibility:  

• The actual content in an email
• How that content is displayed 

Creating Accessible Email Content

A lot of thought goes into an email — from crafting the perfect subject line to creating compelling calls-to-action. Just as much thought should go into planning, writing, and producing content that is accessible to the widest range of users. In practical terms, that comes down to a few guidelines worth following:

Write Shorter Copy

It’s fun to build complex, poetic narratives that are a testament to our control over the written word. But what good are those narratives if no one but ourselves or a select group of people understands them? Or if they’re so long that no one in their right mind would ever read them? 

The first step to creating accessible email content is to keep your copy short. In their State of Email Engagement Report, Litmus found that the average email attention span is just over 13 seconds. That’s not a lot of time to get your point across. Additionally, many people suffer from cognitive disabilities — like dyslexia and dementia — that make reading long texts difficult or even impossible. Even without disabilities, people are often distracted when scanning email, making it unlikely that they’ll read long paragraphs or lengthy campaigns. 

For journalists used to writing longer-form newsletters, writing short sentences, broken up into shorter paragraphs, is a great way to ensure that your emails can be used by more people. And bolding bite-sized pieces throughout your text is another way to highlight important information for someone who’s scanning. 

Use Less Jargon

Using fewer words is important, but so is your choice of words. The typical email list represents a diverse group of people, with differing backgrounds, levels of education, and experiences. Not everyone comes to an email with the same context and understanding of the world.

But, for marketers, journalists, and writers who are in the weeds of their particular niche, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using lots of jargon. Doing so risks alienating a lot of your subscribers.

Opt for commonly-used words, define difficult terms and acronyms, and try to make your copy understandable for those without your experience and expertise. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that someone who’s encountering your content for the first time would be able to understand it as easily as someone who’s been a loyal reader.

Localize for Cultural Understanding

Just like you need to be conscious of people’s educational backgrounds, you need to think about their cultural context, too. Depending on your audience, you should localize your content to reflect their cultural backgrounds to keep your emails accessible.

Localization goes beyond mere translation (though that’s important in its own right). It’s about taking into account a subscriber’s culture and updating your content to make it understandable and inclusive. Think about all of those horror stories you hear about brands translating campaigns without understanding the cultural cues audiences use to make sense of something.  (A personal favorite blunder: The time Coors translated its slogan into Spanish without realizing it meant, “suffer from diarrhea.” Not exactly the best motto for a drink….) 

While avoiding those kinds of blunders is ideal, localizing your content also helps prevent simpler cases of confusion and creates emails that are more accessible. 

Use Inclusive Imagery

Similarly, you need to be mindful when choosing the images you include in an email. The 13 seconds people spend on an email is mostly for scanning purposes. People pick out the headlines and see what images tell them about the content. So choosing images that are easy to understand — and inclusive — is a good way to create more accessible email experiences.

Images that are easy to understand are ones that reflect the meaning of your message. Even if people aren’t reading every word and just glance at images, they’ll be able to understand what value you’re trying to convey.

Inclusive imagery is imagery that reflects — or includes — your subscribers. It doesn’t exclude different groups based on race, gender, religion, sexual preference, or economic status. It shows you understand all of your subscribers, not just the ones who look and act like you.

Inclusive imagery also means making images accessible for people using assistive technology like screen readers. Not everyone can visually see images in an email, so including alternative (ALT) text — text that describes the content of an image — along with your images ensures more people can get value out of your emails.

While ALT text requires adding some code to an email, most email service providers and content management systems allow you to do so within their email editors. If you don’t have the ability to add ALT text, you can always include it as a caption underneath an image. Either way, having additional descriptive text for non-vision users is one of the best ways to keep emails accessible.

Designing Accessible Email Campaigns

Now that you’ve got some accessible content ready, it’s time to design your email. Even if you don’t consider yourself a designer, there are some basic things you can do from a visual design perspective to ensure that your emails are accessible for subscribers.

Use Real Text, Not Just Images

One of the most important things is to use real text as opposed to all-image emails. Marketers are often tempted to design an entire email in something like Photoshop or Canva, since both provide limitless options for making emails that look cool. And journalists frequently include images in emails to illustrate their stories or highlight key pieces of data. Either way, image-heavy emails are almost always less accessible for subscribers.

A number of email clients will disable images by default — largely for security reasons. Some businesses will do the same at a network level. Either way, when images are disabled for all-image emails, that means that subscribers will not be able to access, use, or benefit from the information in those emails. But while images can be turned off, real text will always be displayed to a reader.

Here’s one example of what subscribers would see when images are disabled. Is this email usable for you?

While you can combat disabled images using descriptive alternative text in the HTML of the email, it still creates a subpar experience for most people. It’s especially important for users with low or no vision who rely on assistive technology like screen reader software. Without that real text, there is nothing for a screen reader to actually read to the user, creating a terrible experience for people who will likely, rightfully, and quickly unsubscribe. 

Keep Copy Readable

Using real text for your copy is priority number one, but your next goal is to make sure that your copy is actually readable. Again, people have a wide range of abilities, especially when it comes to reading. But there are concrete ways to make sure that copy is easier for them to read regardless of their cognitive or visual abilities. 

The first is to use copy that is big enough to be seen even for low-vision users. At a bare minimum, copy should be at least 14px. Realistically, starting around 18px is a better way to go. Text any smaller gets difficult to read, especially on mobile devices or screens that are farther away from a subscriber’s eyes. 

Likewise, you need to keep the contrast of your copy high. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), one of the governing documents of accessibility, has clear guidelines on contrast ratios. But it basically breaks down to this: 

Make it easy for users to see content by separating the foreground from the background.

This means using things like black or dark text on a white or light background, or the inverse if you’re going for a darker look. Avoid colors that are too close together, as people with visual problems will have a hard time distinguishing elements in your email. 

Finally, be mindful of how you align text. For left-to-right languages like English, keep most of your text left-aligned. For right-to-left languages like Arabic, make your text right-aligned. Although center-aligned text is visually appealing due to its symmetry, it poses readability problems. Left- and right-aligned text gives a reader a consistent starting point for jumping to the next line. Center-aligned text makes a reader do extra work to find the next line, creating significant hurdles for people who might already be struggling to process that information. 

A good general rule is to left- or right-align any text that’s longer than 2-3 lines. The one exception: Shorter headlines should be just fine when center-aligned. 

Make Links Tappable

Readability helps subscribers access information in an email, but what about helping them to use it? The main way people use an email is by clicking or tapping on links to get to landing pages, apps, articles, etc. So it’s important to keep those links — whether they’re text or buttons — usable. 

First, you need to make it clear that links are actually links. Follow well-known conventions like making links a different color from surrounding elements, including underlines on text links, and adding hover states to those links. 

Second, you need to include ample space around links so that it’s easy for users — especially those with motor disorders — to tap the link. Using generous line spacing for paragraphs with text links, or lots of white space around buttons, will help your subscribers use your emails and get real benefit from them. 

Create Scannable Emails

Finally, it’s important to create emails that are easy for subscribers to scan and understand even when they’re not reading every word. Again, 13 seconds isn’t a lot of time to get your message across, so using hierarchy and layout to aid scanning helps subscribers process information quicker.

Hierarchy is simply creating an arrangement of your content based on its relative importance. Headlines are important, so they’re generally larger. Text is often secondary, so it’s smaller. Calls to action (CTAs) are extremely important, so they’re usually larger, more colorful, and the most prominent thing in an email. Sticking to that hierarchy makes it easy for subscribers to quickly get what they need from your email.

Favoring simpler email layouts is helpful, too. Overly complex layouts — like those with multiple columns, lots of different sized elements, or busy backgrounds — create cognitive load that makes it harder for subscribers to manage. Simpler one- or two-column layouts help reinforce hierarchy and scannability, creating more accessible emails in the process. Whenever possible, emails should auto-size to the device layout on which they’re being read (mobile vs. desktop vs. tablet).

And that’s our goal, right? To reach as many people as possible with our emails and ensure they can access, use, and benefit from them? While there are a lot of considerations — especially more advanced technical ones — when it comes to email accessibility, these guidelines will help you to improve your email’s accessibility. Hopefully, now when you hear the word accessibility, your first thought won’t just be of ramps or parking spaces, but also how you can build better experiences and relationships with your own subscribers.

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