What is email accessibility? You hear the word accessibility thrown around a lot in website and document design. Digital accessibility refers to the practice of designing digital web content so that people with disabilities can access and interact with that digital content. This includes those with visual, auditory, cognitive, mobility or other disabilities.
Email is part of everyday life, whether it’s through business, selling products, getting the latest news or communicating with family and friends.
One billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability. That’s one billion people. Of those billion people, 285 million are visually impaired and may use a screen reader to access web content. These assistive devices read text aloud. For those living with disabilities, accessible content isn’t just about convenience, it’s about necessity.
Here are some top tips to make emails accessible to all:
- Use Headers. If you use headers, screen reader users are able to efficiently navigate through the hierarchy of the page.
- Use Tables only to present data content. This helps people who are using keyboard-only access to make better sense of content.
- Use Contrasting Colors for backgrounds and text. Some colors might look nice, but don’t work in terms of readability for visually impaired users.
- Use meaningful Link Text. If you label a hyperlink with “click here”, this does not provide enough descriptive information for people who can only hear the links, let alone people who can see the link.
- Use helpful descriptions in ALT Tags within your images.
You don’t have to go out of your way to make emails accessible. Just take some time to work on good design!
For more information on Accessibility, call 888-232-9321
