It’s easy to think that everyone is going to view your email in the same light as you. You can assess the quality of the email by evaluating the font, color contrast, and copy.
Not everyone who receives emails experiences them the same way.
It is particularly true for those with disabilities from dyslexia to blindness.
In all aspects of life, it is vital to accommodate people with disabilities. Email marketing is not an exception. It is not only the right thing to do but also allows for your Email Marketing Strategy to reach its fullest potential.
We’ll look at why email accessibility matters. We will also discuss a few strategies you can employ to make your email content more accessible.
What Is Email Accessibility?
Email accessibility can be defined as an email that is readable and usable by everyone, including people with disabilities or vision impairment. 1
If your email is not accessible, even if you write the best copy and the most eye-catching email, it will not resonate with or all users. Your subscribers might respond differently to your email if they have the following disabilities:
- Visual – Blindness or color blindness?
- Deafness
- Motor – Paralysis or cerebral palsy.
- Learning- Dyslexia
For example, visually impaired people might listen to your message with an assistive gadget instead of reading it. People who are colorblind may be able to read your email but struggle with certain colors.
It is important to change your perspective if you do not have a disability.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, email accessibility is a simple process.
Why is Email Accessibility Important?
Email accessibility cannot be an afterthought in 2021. Email accessibility must be a part of all campaigns.
Here are some reasons:
An Important Subset of Your Customers Could Have Disabilities
You may not realize how common disabilities are. Take a look at the statistics below:
- Two out of four Americans suffer from a physical or mental disability
- One million Americans are blind; 3
- Color blindness affects 4.5% of men and 8% of women 4
- One in 10 people has dyslexia 5
- Eight trillion dollars is the estimated global spending power of people with disabilities. 6
A large subset of customers wields a great deal of influence. Neglecting the needs of this group will only hurt your business.
You should also keep in mind the fact that new disabilities are created every day. Your customers will have to interact with your emails differently if they do. By ignoring email accessibility, you could lose your customers to a competitor who is more inclusive.
Inaccessible Emails Hurt Your Conversion Rate
You want your email campaign to be successful after you have invested time, creativity, and energy into it. It is directly opposed by ignoring accessibility standards and people with disabilities.
Your subscribers with disabilities will not respond well to inaccessible emails. You’re already lowering your conversion rate by not implementing email accessibility.
You can maximize the performance of your campaign by ensuring that your emails are easily accessible. This means you will get more clicks and conversions.
If you ignore email accessibility, you may be open to litigation
Avoiding litigation is a good enough reason to be inclusive. In court cases relating to the Americans with Disabilities Act, email accessibility is becoming a more and more common issue. 7
In 1990, the ADA came into effect. The ADA was implemented to ensure that people with disabilities have the same access to opportunities as others. It requires, for example, that employers provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities. The law also requires that public spaces provide certain concessions, such as ramps to accommodate wheelchairs.
Recent court rulings have also applied ADA requirements for online accessibility, as the internet is now a major part of our daily lives. Businesses have been in hot water because they failed to make their online services and websites accessible.
Email accessibility is essential to avoid legal issues. To ensure that your email campaigns are successful, it’s recommended to use email segmentation as well as the A/B test.
Email Accessibility Guide
After you’ve learned why email accessibility is important, let’s look at some basic guidelines to help you improve the accessibility of your email campaign.
Increase your Contrast Ratio
The contrast ratio measures the difference between the background and foreground color of your email.
Use a large contrast ratio to make email easier to read for those with impaired vision. Text and images can be difficult to distinguish from the background if your contrast ratio falls too low.
Email accessibility experts often recommend a contrast ratio between 4.5 and 1. Online tools are available to test the contrast ratio of your email.
Make Text Easy to Read
You want your email to be easy to understand after you have perfected it.
Here are some tips on how to make the text of your email more accessible.
- Align the text to the left- Text that is aligned to the left is easier to read, especially for those with dyslexia.
- Use large and legible fonts – Your font size must always be at least 14. px. It will make it easier for readers who have poor vision to read your email on smaller screens.
- Use Live Text- A live text is text that’s not shown within an image. Live text, unlike text inside images, can be read aloud using assistive devices.
Underline all Links
Underlining your links is another simple tip to improve accessibility. It’s common to change the color of links, but not everyone can see colors in the same way. Colorblind people may not notice a link that stands out for you.
By underlining your links, you will make them easier to find and more likely to be clicked.
Include HTML Language Attributes
You should always add an HTML language attribute to the header of your email.
Language attributes inform assistive devices and the search engine what language to read an email in. Text readers will then be able to pronounce the words correctly and give listeners an easier experience.
The text attribute for English is lang=”en”.