Email Accessibility
Email Accessibility Quick Tips
Use a legible sans-serif font, such as Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Tahoma, or similar
Keep text at a reasonable size, typically at least 11 or 12pt.
Align text to to the left instead of centered or justified
Break up text into short paragraphs
Email Body & Subject
Avoid using all capital letters and excessive italics or underlines
Subject lines matter, make them as relevant as possible
Clear and inclusive language
When writing your email, make sure to use clear simple language so everyone can understand. Use shorter sentences that are concise. Avoid using jargon and abbreviations or explain any terms or abbreviations that may be unfamiliar when they are first used.
Event Posters
If adding an event poster to an email, make sure that any text in the image is repeated either in the email body text or in the alt text. Important information like event details (date, time, location) should be included in the body text of the email.
Ensure you are attaching .png files to your email distributions, .pdf files are not easily read by screen readers.
Signatures
When adding signatures, use actual text for name and contact information to ensure greater accessibility. Adding a logo, such as the Nanook Bear is perfectly fine, just be mindful to add alt text for the bear image.
Links
✗ Bad example
I think you should read this article about link text.
This link has text that does not indicate its purpose when read out of context: The screen reader would just announce "link: this." Screen readers also provide dialogs that list all the links in a page. If "this" was one of the links listed, it'd be impossible to tell where it might take you.
✗ Bad example
Check out this new course! (read more)
✓ Good example
I think you should read this recently published article by CRCD faculty member
After adjusting the link text, when the link is focused, screen readers will announce "link: article about link text." This link text is successful because its meaning is independent of its surrounding text.
Attachments
Documents are often not accessible, and can be difficult to remediate. Before you attach a document to an email, ask yourself if this is the best way to communicate the information, or could it instead be simply added to the body of the email? Could it be linked into Google Drive?
Sources include Ability Net, Harvard Accessibility and University of Alaska Digital Accessibility Guidelines