Each day, most of us will send or receive multiple emails. With email being such an integral part of both personal and professional communication, it is important that every effort is made to make sure everyone can read the information you have sent them. The following are a set of tips which will make your email content more accessible.
Subject Lines
Your subject line is important. Someone who is using a screen reader will use your subject line to determine whether your email is worth opening. Make your subject line brief and clear. Ensure it gives a good idea of what your message is about.
Links
A common mistake people make when including links in their emails is to present them with the text “Click here”. This approach is not accessible. A user with a screen reader screen reader user will not know what this link refers to when they are scrolling through each of the links on the screen. It is better practice to present your links with meaningful text like “visit our website here” or “Follow us on Twitter”.
Furthermore, never use an image as a link. Images may be difficult for someone with low vision to click on accurately.
Also, never copy and paste the full http link? For example http://www.ul.ie, as screen reader users and text to speech users will hear each character of text. Instead, use descriptive links, www.ul.ie or ul.ie homepage. The procedure to do this, is right click the link and select edit, in the text to display box type a brief description of the link.
Images and Alt-Text
The old cliché says that a picture tells a thousand words. However, if you are unable to see the image, it is possible you could miss out on valuable information. When composing an email, it is important that you do not rely on visual elements to convey your message. It may be tempting to simply embed the poster for an event in your email invitations, but this may lead to some alot of people not being able to read the information.
Each image you use should have appropriate alt-text associated with it, which is an attribute that can be edited in most email clinetsclients. This text describes the image in clear detail. Alt-text is used by screen reader software used by people who are blind or visually impaired. To add alt-text to an image, simply right click the image, edit image and alt text.
Contrast
Colour can be a great way of making your emails attractive and eye-catching. That said, you must make sure that your colour choices do not make it harder for people to read your content. Use colours that have a high level of contrast with each other. For example, black text on a white background is easier to view than green text on a blue background.
In general, you should not rely on colour to convey information. Your reader may be colour blind or visually impaired, and they may miss your message if you exclusively use colour. Use a minimum contrast of 4.5 : 1 to contrast colours, see ?? For more..
Layout
Like any web content, how you organise the content of your emails is important. Use headings where appropriate to clearly mark sections. You must use the heading styles or HTML header attributes to do this. Simply using bold text or a different colour for your headings will not be recognised by screen reader software.
Use an appropriate font size. 14pt font is usually the standard for maximum readability. You should also make sure that the different elements of your email are well spaced out with plenty of whitespace. A cluttered layout where elements are crowded together is difficult to read.
Whatever the purpose of the emails you send, you will want to make sure your message can be read and understood by as many people as possible. By following the recommendations laid out in this piece, your work will be more accessible and you can communicate clearly with far more readers. With all your readers? All your audience?