Are your emails accessible?
” Accessibility means that all people can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with electronic information and be active, contributing members of the digital world.”
Please raise your hand if you’ve ever opened an email and the center-aligned paragraphs and decorative, quirky fonts with atrocious spacing hit you in the face. Add to the mix the too-small, pixelated images, and that email is on its way to the trash can (well, it depends on who sent it).
No doubt that the email creator invested a lot of time and effort in developing quality content, but the lack of accessibility features may prevent the reader from accessing and focusing on the content. 65 million people in the US live with some type of disability, and writing accessible emails assures that they too can participate in email correspondence. By adjusting font size, adding alternative text to images, and adding titles to URLs (to name a few accessible design examples) everyone can benefit from accessible digital content – people with and without impairments.
Creating accessible emails is not a daunting process; in fact, it feels more like the expression of kindness and consideration for people you are communicating with via email. Writing accessible emails is just one of the ways to create an inclusive and equitable environment.
Goals
In this microlearning course, you will learn how to create accessible emails by:
- identifying and applying email accessibility standards
- examining email accessibility guidelines
- using the email accessibility checker
Time Commitment
For less than 10-min a day (in a 3-day commitment), you will become a superb accessible email writer.
