Accessibility Matters: Improving Email Engagement for All Readers
What is accessibility?
Merriam-Webster provides the following five definitions for the word accessibility:
- capable of being reached
- capable of being used or seen
- capable of being understood or appreciated
- capable of being influenced
- easily used or accessed by people with disabilities : adapted for use by people with disabilities
All definitions above fit with the desire to make our digital content accessible. When it comes to email, accessibility typically means making our digital content readable, navigable, and digestible for those who use AI screen readers and other adaptive devices. We want to be able to reach a wide audience and to be easily understood and/or appreciated.
Below are a few impairment statistics to give you an idea of why providing accessibility to our email recipients is so important:
- Vision Impairments: 2.2 billion people worldwide
- Hearing Loss: 48 million Americans
- Color Blindness: 1 in 12 men / 1 in 200 women
- Dyslexia: 10% of people worldwide
Now, what’s important to remember before moving forward with the ‘how’ is to truly understand the ‘why.’ We are not working to make content accessible out of pity or to somehow manipulate those who need additional support to take in our messaging. Nope. We are making the effort because ALL of our readers MATTER.
All of our readers deserve to receive an accessible message. We are not making judgments, assumptions or placing fault. What we ARE doing is being HUMAN. Connecting with the very people who want to connect with our content.
Compassion = Inclusion = Kindness = Humanity
Another consideration for making our content more accessible has to do with situational impairments that we have all encountered at some time or another.
Has anyone ever tried to read an email while sitting on a sunny soccer field? Visibility under the open sun beaming down can be almost impossible at times. However, a quick switch to a different color scheme format could provide a whole new contrast providing accessibility for you. Voila, just like that, you’ve realized that accessibility truly is for everyone!
Those with more long-term or serious impairments often have to use a bit more effort to ingest digital messaging. Some have relied on AI well before AI was cool. It has been or has become an integral part of how they consume our content on a daily basis. What am I talking about here?
Take a peek at this Screen Reader Demo for Digital Accessibility from the UCSF Documents & Media Photography Center. Their team demonstrates the challenges often faced by those with visual impairments. As you’ll see from the video, this topic is far more expansive than what one blog post could cover and it is not intended to be all-encompassing or 100% technical. Rather, we’re going to talk about some key reasons why this is important and a few very minimal effort and high-impact ways we can be kind and improve accessibility.
Anything we can do to improve usability, reach more people and increase engagement is a win on both sides of the message!
Easy Accessible Wins with Email
Here at Arkus, we’ve noticed two main areas where we can help our clients create accessible messages via Email and Experience Cloud sites. Below, we’ll talk about those few key areas where we can take minimal effort and have a high impact.
Alternative Text
Alternative Text is the text that will be read aloud when your content is consumed and shared via a screen reader AI. This text is often simple to add and can make someone who cannot see your graphics truly feel like they are able to “see” your messaging. The important thing here is that your alternative text is a description, helpful, and provides context. For example, if you share an image of a dog wearing a Santa hat on your site the alt text should be something like: “white puppy wearing Santa hat while sitting in a gift box.” This really gives the reader a chance to envision the intended message. Using alt text such as, “santa dog in box” does not give the same effect and could even lead to unintended thoughts.
Moral of the story: use Alt Text to help and influence and guide the imagination!
Verbiage in Content
The way we speak to our audience is important even beyond AI screen readers. Remember our definition above where accessibility is also about being easily understood and appreciated? We can do this in a really simple way by keeping our content near an 8th-grade reading level.
Yes, you read that correctly. An 8th grade reading level is considered accessible for the average American.
It means nothing of our educational knowledge or academia, but rather that “on average” this level is more digestible to us and easy to consume. And let's face it, unless we are writing to a highly educational or research-driven audience, do we really need to use “fancy words” to get to the heart of the message? Not likely. People want to read a message from another person.
Talk to your audience digitally the same way you would face-to-face!
We should also enter this “face-to-face,” interaction with an agenda in mind where we line out the specific topics we want to present to our readers. AN AGENDA!
If you watched the accessibility demo from the USCF team linked above you would see how effective headers and titles can be in helping people navigate your email or Experience Cloud site. THIS is where the beauty of AI screen readers comes into play.
When writing your content, remember to write it with easily digestible language and segment it by topics, like an agenda or outline.
Font Selection
To serif or not to serif? That is the question. And the answer: forget the serifs! And while you’re at it, forget the flourishes too. Sans-serif for the digital accessibility win. Using sans-serif types for the bulk of body text in digital content helps with much more than just visibility. Sans-serif fonts most often allow for easy digestion for those with many cognitive and learning impairments too. Some type designers go an extra step and include flourishes that connect letters or add additional decorative elements. While beautiful in some contexts, serifs or flourishes in decorative fonts can be difficult to read in smaller sizes; those with dyslexia can interpret some decorative fonts as shapes instead of letters.
While letters originally were chiseled into tablets, the sans serif over serif font rule is not set in stone. Serif fonts may improve the legibility of printed material when used at smaller sizes, and can help some people with dyslexia correctly identify similarly appearing letters in certain contexts.
However, when it comes to digital content, it is best to avoid the following for your main areas:
- Fonts that make written content difficult to comprehend
- Fonts that slow down a visual reader
- Fonts that look like shapes
- Fonts that do not separate characters
- Fonts that are very decorative
Small disclaimer here about decorative fonts: I’m not trying to pick on the frilly fonts. As a designer myself, I have a slight love affair with decorative fonts. They have a time and a place and when used properly can have a glorious effect on your marketing efforts.
For digitally consumed content though, when in doubt, serif is out!
Buttons
Buttons are great, aren’t they? We see them, we click them, we do things! But again, we have to consider those who can’t “see” buttons and are consuming our content through an AI screen reader. The easiest and most considerate thing we want to do here is to use the proper WORDS on our buttons! “Click Here” simply is not an acceptable option. We have too many options…like a whole keyboard full of options.
Imagine yourself again using that AI screen reader from the video above. You are reading halfway through a page and ready to buy those event tickets when suddenly your cat jumps on the desk and you know it…they walk across the keyboard! Yikes. Now, quickly navigate back to that button…the one where you were ready to buy tickets. But wait, there are 4 buttons on the page and they are all labeled as “Click Here.” Whomp, whomp, whomp. Messaging fail. Accessibility fail. Call to Action fail. None of us want this. And now we know how to avoid this and be more considerate!
Some labeling options to better help people navigate your Call to Actions can include:
- Buy Tickets
- Donate
- Register
- More on XYZ Topic
Using the proper words on buttons can help us send people where they want to go.
Experience Cloud Accessibility
Experience Cloud is another powerful platform where we can reach prospects and participants through digital messaging and experiences on the web. My colleague, Jennifer Olson, is very well versed in making Experience Cloud a highly accessible experience for your users. She will be sharing a blog in the coming year with practical tips to enhance your website's inclusivity!
Her blog will include a recommendation for a widget to enhance accessibility on your website.
Arkus is in the process of rebuilding our website as we speak and plan to implement this functionality ourselves. We understand you too might have a period of time while you’re working to put something like this in place, just like we are at Arkus. Change takes time and planning. It is important to start somewhere, even if that starts with just researching what you plan to implement.
Audit your Accessibility
If this blog has you wishing your content was more accessible or looking for confirmation that you are doing all the right things, let us help you with an accessibility audit. We are happy to review your latest emails or your Experience Cloud site to provide valuable feedback to reach all of your readers as you well know that each and every one of them matter!
What would you like to hear more about in the world of email marketing and digital experiences? Tell us on the Salesforce Trailblazer Community, or message us directly at LinkedIn@akdonahey or LinkedIn@olsonjenn05.
