People with disabilites and physical challenges needs to be able to read your email marketing content and respond accordingly. Some disable and aging email users are able to read and respond to your emails with their challenges in mind, and some disabled people such as those with visual impairments have special tools that verbally read your email marketing message or otherwise aid them in the comprehension of email and other online content. Some email designs make such tools cumbersome to use so its important to design your email accordingly or provide two versions of your email marketing message.
Visual impairments are not the only disabilities that might make your email difficult to understand. Here are some tips for making your emails accessible to many types of disable and aging subscribers:
- Provide a link to a text only version of your email to allow text reading devices to easily read your content to people with visual impairments. Make sure your email begins with the link and a summary of your email content so visually impaired subscribers can tell whether your email is worth listening to in its entirety. Also make sure your text version adequately describes any video, images, charts and graphics in your email.
- Use image description (alt text) when including images in your email. Reading devices read alt text so a visually impaired person knows what images are in the email. This is especially important when use images that contain text.
- Use fonts and points sizes that are easy to read so that people with low vision can interpret them.
- Use text and background colors with sufficient contrast so that words are easy to read.
- Provide a link to a text only transcript of any audio used in your email.
- Make sure any forms you ask people in your email list to fill in can be tapped through in logical order and design your forms to minimize the number of keystokes necessary to complete the form.
- Keep your email design short, concise and easy to scan. Avoid distracting design elements such as blinking text, flashing images or audio and video streams that cannot be easily turned off.
If you use an email marketing service provider such as: Email Marketing Powers, ask about accessibility requirements.
