I, like 15% of adults, have impaired hearing. I didn’t do it the cool way, by clubbing all through my life, or playing the drums in a rock band. That wouldn’t be so bad. Before I was into email marketing, I used to fire guns, mainly in a range. Who’d have thought that might harm my hearing? Not my employers evidently.

TV subtitles are a game-changer for me. I can watch films and understand the dialogue, probably better than those who don’t use it. Research suggests less than 20% of those who use closed captions have a hearing problem, the others having babies that need their sleep, or watching TV in pubs, not to mention those having problems understanding regional accents. 

Images are blocked by some email service providers, and it is the preferred default by some subscribers. Visually impaired readers use screen readers which cannot deal with images. Enter alt tags. These provide alternative text for images. It also means that you do not have to describe the image with a caption, freeing it up to further the intent of the email.

There are additional benefits. Some of your subscribers might use a screen reader to remove the necessity of a mobile phone being within eyesight and there’s the suggestion that it pleases the Google search results. It all helps. 

Large text can increase readability. Most marketing emails are read on mobile devices which means that the design that looked so lovely on your tablet can be difficult to read on a downsized screen. It’s easy enough for a subscriber to increase font size but this can lead to the design collapsing. Ensure this doesn’t happen to your emails.

Remember that they might be read on a commute, with the train rocking and the subscriber being bumped into. You might well know the problems. Increasing font size is not only the choice of those who experience problems in normal circumstances. You should use whitespace creatively, with short sentences and non-justified text, in order to enhance a marketing email for all your subscribers, and not just those with specific difficulties.

One accessibility factor for marketing emails is rather strange. You will probably have heard of logical hierarchy; it’s the basis for graphic designers when working on page layouts. The free email marketing templates you use will have already taken it into consideration and it is best to get a handle on what it means and how it works before changing matters too radically. It’s far from new as it was taught as mainstream back in the 1960s.

It’s little more than the way readers ‘read’ pages and takes into account graphics and text. ‘The Magic Z’ was instilled in me, and most subscribers will read the headline from left to right and then move down the Z and go from left to right again. It helps readability for those who struggle with comprehension and gives clear evidence for where to put important information.

There are significant benefits to ensuring your marketing emails are accessible, and not only for the obvious reasons.