Email accessibility means building messages that people can read and act on regardless of how they access them — with a screen reader, at 200% zoom, with low vision, with a motor impairment that makes small tap targets useless, or simply on a phone in bright sunlight.
The reason to care is not only ethical. Accessible email is better structured email, and better structured email is more likely to render correctly, more likely to pass spam filters that penalise image-heavy messages, and more likely to be readable by the automated systems that increasingly summarise inboxes.
Here is what to fix, in order of how much difference it makes.
1. Use real semantic structure
Screen readers navigate by heading. An email built entirely from styled <div> and <span> elements is a single undifferentiated block of text with no way to skip through it.
Use <h1> once for the main headline, <h2> for sections, and <p> for paragraphs. Style them however you like — the semantics and the appearance are independent. If you use tables for layout, which HTML email still requires, mark them role="presentation" so screen readers do not announce them as data tables and read out row and column positions.
2. Set the language
<html lang="en">
One attribute. Without it a screen reader may pronounce your English copy using the user's default voice settings for another language, which ranges from odd to incomprehensible. This is the single cheapest accessibility fix in email.
3. Write alt text that carries the message
Alt text is not a description of the picture. It is the replacement for the picture. If your hero image contains the words "40% off everything this weekend", the alt text is "40% off everything this weekend", not "promotional banner".
Purely decorative images get alt="" — an empty attribute, not a missing one — so screen readers skip them rather than announcing the filename.
This matters beyond accessibility because a large share of recipients see alt text whether or not they need it: many clients block images by default. Everything in email image blocking applies here too.
4. Get contrast right
The WCAG AA standard is a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for body text and 3:1 for large text. Grey-on-white body copy is the most common failure in marketing email, and light grey on white — the fashionable choice for secondary text — is usually well under the threshold.
Build with headroom, because dark mode inversion can change your effective contrast in ways you did not choose. If your text passes at exactly 4.5:1 in light mode, the inverted version is not guaranteed to pass.
5. Make links say where they go
"Click here" and "read more" are meaningless out of context, and screen reader users frequently navigate by pulling up a list of links, stripped of the surrounding sentence. A list of nine "read more" entries is useless.
Write "read the deliverability checklist" instead. This also improves click-through, because a link that describes its destination is a better sell than one that does not.
6. Size tap targets properly
44×44 pixels is the practical minimum for a tap target. Text links stacked in a footer with 8 pixels between them are unusable for anyone with a tremor, and irritating for everyone else. Give footer links vertical padding, and make buttons real buttons — a table cell with padding and a background colour, not a bare styled link.
7. Do not rely on colour alone
If the only difference between the "in stock" and "out of stock" items in your email is red versus green text, some of your readers cannot tell them apart. Add a word, an icon or a position.
8. Keep a single-column layout on mobile
Multi-column layouts reflow unpredictably and read out of order in screen readers. A single column at mobile widths is both an accessibility and a comprehension improvement, and it is what mobile email design recommends anyway.
9. Provide a plain text version
Every email should have a plain text alternative. Screen readers handle it well, some clients prefer it, and spam filters treat a missing text part as a small negative signal. Most platforms generate one automatically — check what yours produces, because an auto-generated text part built from an image-heavy email is often close to empty. See plain text vs HTML email.
Testing it
The quick version: turn on VoiceOver on macOS or iOS and listen to your email. It takes four minutes and reveals more than any checklist. Then view the email at 200% zoom, and view it with images disabled.
Add these to your pre-send checklist rather than treating accessibility as a project. It costs almost nothing when it is part of the template and a great deal when it is a retrofit.
Frequently asked questions
Do accessibility laws apply to marketing email?
The ADA and equivalent legislation elsewhere have been applied to digital communications, and email sent by public bodies is explicitly in scope in many jurisdictions. For commercial senders the legal position is less settled than for websites, but the practical case stands on its own: an inaccessible email is one a portion of your list cannot act on.
Does alt text affect deliverability?
Indirectly. Image-heavy emails with little real text score worse with spam filters, and alt text contributes to the text content filters can read. It also means the message still lands when images are blocked, which is a large share of opens.
What contrast ratio should email text meet?
4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text, per WCAG AA. Aim higher than the minimum, because dark mode inversion in some clients can shift your effective contrast without your involvement.
Is a plain text version still necessary?
Yes. It serves screen readers and text-only clients, and its absence is a mild negative signal to spam filters. Check what your platform auto-generates rather than assuming it is adequate, especially for image-led designs.
