Email Accessibility Part 2: Let's make your emails heard

Tiny housekeeping note: This 10-part series, Email Accessibility: How To Open Your Inbox To Everyone, will be worth it for email creators. Join me!

Today, let’s talk about people who might not hear your message—literally.

As you might expect, not everyone experiences sound the same way.

Some people are deaf, some are hard of hearing, or dealing with things like tinnitus.

Others might be checking their email while watching Netflix or commuting with their sound off.

So, how can you make your email work without sound?

If you’re embedding audio or video in your emails, there are 3 things you can do to make sure they’re accessible.

• Include transcripts for audio content

• Include a video description

• Add captions to all videos

Accessibility tip: People often mix up captions and subtitles. Subtitles translate speech for non-native speakers, but they skip things like music or sound effects. Basically, they're a language-specific subset of captions.

Short, snappy animated GIFs bring a lot of personality and connection to your content, but can cause problems for some people, especially those with photosensitive epilepsy.

Here are a few ways to make it as accessible and friendly as possible:

How to Make Your Animated GIFs Email-Friendly

• Skip rapid-fire flashing between 2 Hz and 55 Hz to keep your GIF from causing any unplanned seizures.

• Go for smooth transitions or slow down the animation speed—give your readers time to catch the info without feeling like they’re in a race.

• Remember, GIFs are still images, so don’t forget to add alt text for those using screen readers.

• Not everyone’s a fan of moving pictures (that includes me too) so please offer a static image or a text option.

If you want to know more about interactive emails, Sarah Gallardo has a whole section about email accessibility

That’s it.

A few easy tweaks can go a long way in making your content warm, welcoming, and accessible.

See you next week. 💌
Lia

PS Do you have any questions or suggestions?

I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to my email and I'll get back to you.