Accessibility is not an extra, it is mandatory today. 2.2 billion people across the world has some form of vision impairment.
Considering their needs in our digital communication is important. We need to make emails more accessible.
For fully abled folks it is hard to imagine how can an email be more accessible. Well, it all comes to small, but very influential factors. Unfortunately, these change from system to system, a web browsers and email clients function differently. At first, the task can seem daunting, but, luckily, there are some key points that can be addressed. And these have to be addressed, if a company wants their Digital Marketing to work.
Understanding Assistive Technologies
Most third-party services use screen reading to help the vision impaired. This means that they follow human logic, and read the text from left to right, line by line. AI assistants, such as Alexa and Cortana can do a little more than this, but the principles are the same.
The main takeaway from all of this is that our emails must not rely on pictures. Not only because of accessibility reasons, but because more and more people read their mails on mobile. And trust us, no one bothers to read an email that takes long time to load. So, text should contain every main information, complemented by auxiliary pictures. Pictures that have their alt-text filled out!
Easily Readable Emails
So how does a good text look like? Well, it has:
- Good contrast;
- Descriptive;
- Left aligned and segmented;
- Never justified, or centre-aligned;
- Contains large action areas (eg.: hyperlinks, buttons).
Good editing also eliminates the possibility of assisting software messing up something. But do you know what else makes it easier for them to process your mail? Coding.
Well Coded Emails
Emails should be as small as possible, and should also refrain from the use of tables. The latter can complicate readability for people and software alike. Another way to make emails accessible with programming is enabling resizeable fonts.