When we leverage emails to promote a brand or educate the customers, empowerment comes along automatically. Hence, it becomes all the more critical that they are read and comprehended by everyone to make the most out of an email marketing campaign. This is where email accessibility comes into play. It is the practice of designing and distributing emails in such a way that anyone, irrespective of their imparities can understand them.
Email marketers are getting more and vocal about email accessibility. Though a growing trend, email accessibility still lacks the attention and efforts it deserves. Today, I’ll tell you how to make your emails more accessible and answer a common curiosity in email marketing – Why is email accessibility even necessary? So, let’s get started.
With the popularity of voice assistants soaring with every passing day, they are becoming a prominent tool for visually impaired people to decipher emails. Now, here’s how the oh-so-advanced Alexas and Siris of the world perform when it comes to reading out the emails as per a report from Chamaileon:
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“Alexa is the only voice assistant that can read out the whole email. Alexa reads through the HTML text only and skips image alt texts.
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Siri reads the sender name, subject line, and preheader
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Cortana can read email only from Outlook (only like Siri)
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Google Assistant doesn’t support email at all”
Reality check done. Now, let’s have a look at some of the best ways to make your emails more accessible and widen your reach.
Use semantic code
Incorporating semantic codes is a fundamental practice that developers can follow while coding. However, most of them don’t. To enhance the accessibility, it is essential to use header (<h1>) and paragraph (<p>) tags. Doing so makes it easier for the screen reader to process the content as with these tags, the screen reader can bifurcate between a heading and a paragraph.
It enhances the overall reading experience and eases the email navigation process. If you are looking for a professional service to do it for you, then Pardot email templates and Mailchimp templates are your best bets.
Setting the title
The <title> tag can be leveraged in two ways. It places a title on the webpage’s tab while you open the email in a browser. Along with that, it helps screen readers grasp the context of the content. Having a hard time dealing with accessibility and other important aspects of your email marketing campaign? Well, seasoned professionals like Mailchimp email experts and Marketo certified experts are always there for your rescue.
Using alt text
In the email marketing domain, everyone is aware of how essential the alt text is. The ability to make your email readable even before the images load saves quite a lot of bounce rate. Not only that, but alt text also aids in enhancing the accessibility of your email. Putting the correct alt text would let the screen readers describe images precisely to the recipients.
However, it is important to remember that you need not put alt text for every image you use in your email. If a visual element (image or GIF) is used just for the aesthetics, then remember to set an empty alt=”” on the image. Doing this would enable the screen reader to skip these elements.
Color contrast
Contrast ratio is a crucial factor, especially for the subscribers suffering from specific visual impairments. To meet level AA standards issued by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, an email design should feature a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1. Here’s an excellent example of how using a high contrast colour palette in your email can make it more visually appealing and accessible at the same time.
Moreover, to make this more versatile and broaden the reach of your email, you can create different versions of it and let the readers decide. If you are still struggling with the visual aspects of your emails, then using a Mailchimp specialist would ease your entire process.
Font size
The (minimum) default size for the font is 14px. Keeping it less than that would make it difficult for subscribers to read. That being said, you can adjust the font size as per the type of font you are using. Prefer increasing the size when you go for a light font.
Overallreading structure and alignment
To make your emails more accessible, make a practice of following a logical reading order while designing and creating content for your email. Usually, the screen readers read left to right before jumping to the next line. Following a logical reading order would also help the subscribers with dyslexia to have an easy read.
Talking about the text alignment, it should be left-aligned as much as possible. That’s the thumb rule. It might be aesthetically pleasing to have centre-aligned text. But it makes it hard to comprehend for dyslexic subscribers.
Wrapping Up
Enhancing the accessibility of your emails is imperative, given the impact a well-executed email marketing campaign can make on the subscribers. It might sound challenging to start with, but following the practices mentioned below would help you strike the right balance between appeal and accessibility.
