Email accessibility guidelines at Warwick
Keeping your emails accessible
This checklist offers you a blend of legal requirements and best practice from our digital teams. You can either use this as a quick checklist, or discover more about each point in detail.
Explore our webpage guidelines first
Make sure that you have explored our webpage accessibility guidelines, which cover the following:
- Writing
- Format
- Colour
- Images
- Multimedia
- Documents
All of these apply to your work on emails too. Also, remember to include a clear email subject line.
Plain text or HTML?
Emails come in two formats, Plain text or HTML. HTML emails include images, colours and links and look more designed. Plain text emails are more likely to be accessible because there is less which can go wrong.
If you create HTML emails, as well as following all our basic accessibility guidelines.
- Make sure you use a font size of 16px or larger, which is not thin
- Make sure the text is readable with good contrast and does not rely on colour alone for meaning
- Make sure the user can change the size to suit themselves
- Do not include any text on images that you don't explain in words or cover with some alternative (alt) text, follow this guide to imagery and multimedia
- If you are using layouts with tables, you should design your email as you would if you were designing a web page. For example: make sure the text can be navigated without a mouse and reflows to fit all devices.
- See a comprehensive collection of guidance
Taking these steps will make your emails better for all users.
Testing and user testing
No tool or simulator can quite replace talking to people living with different disabilities. Testing your email with disabled users will give you more accurate feedback.
However, you can try using a speech reader yourself to hear how your email sounds.
- You can download NVDA from the software centre.
- You can also try screen readers built-into operation systems:
Keeping your emails accessible
This checklist offers you a blend of legal requirements and best practice from our digital teams. You can either use this as a quick checklist, or discover more about each point in detail.
Explore our webpage guidelines first
Make sure that you have explored our webpage accessibility guidelines, which cover the following:
- Writing
- Format
- Colour
- Images
- Multimedia
- Documents
All of these apply to your work on emails too. Also, remember to include a clear email subject line.
Plain text or HTML?
Emails come in two formats, Plain text or HTML. HTML emails include images, colours and links and look more designed. Plain text emails are more likely to be accessible because there is less which can go wrong.
If you create HTML emails, as well as following all our basic accessibility guidelines.
- Make sure you use a font size of 16px or larger, which is not thin
- Make sure the text is readable with good contrast and does not rely on colour alone for meaning
- Make sure the user can change the size to suit themselves
- Do not include any text on images that you don't explain in words or cover with some alternative (alt) text, follow this guide to imagery and multimedia
- If you are using layouts with tables, you should design your email as you would if you were designing a web page. For example: make sure the text can be navigated without a mouse and reflows to fit all devices.
- See a comprehensive collection of guidance
Taking these steps will make your emails better for all users.
Testing and user testing
No tool or simulator can quite replace talking to people living with different disabilities. Testing your email with disabled users will give you more accurate feedback.
However, you can try using a speech reader yourself to hear how your email sounds.
- You can download NVDA from the software centre.
- You can also try screen readers built-into operation systems: