The Accessibility Act Is Here. Is Your Email Design Compliant?

Key Takeaways

• The European Accessibility Act (EAA), in effect since June 2025, is raising accessibility expectations for digital content, including email, across the industry, even for businesses outside the EU.
• Key accessibility practices for email include sufficient color contrast, meaningful alt text, not relying on color alone for meaning, logical structure with real headings, readable font sizes, and descriptive link text.
• Emails should convey their core message even when images are blocked, since many email clients don’t load images by default.
• Most accessibility improvements also improve the experience for subscribers without disabilities, making this a rare case where compliance and performance align closely.
• A practical first step is to audit your most-used email template against basic accessibility checks and build those checks into your regular review process.

 

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into effect in June 2025, and while it’s a European regulation, its effects are being felt well beyond Europe. Like other major digital regulations before it (GDPR being the most obvious example), the EAA is pushing email service providers, design tools, and email clients globally to raise their baseline standards, which means accessible design is quickly shifting from a “nice to have” to an expectation, even for businesses whose audience is primarily based outside the EU.

If you have any subscribers in the EU, or if your email service provider and design tools start defaulting to more accessible patterns as a result of this regulation, accessibility is worth a fresh look, even if you’ve never thought about it as a compliance issue before.

But here’s the part that often gets lost in conversations about compliance: accessible email design isn’t just about meeting a legal requirement. Many of the practices that make an email more accessible also make it more effective for all subscribers, not just those with disabilities.

What the EAA actually covers for email

The EAA sets requirements for digital content and services to be usable by people with disabilities, with particular attention to color contrast, alternative text for images, and compatibility with screen readers and other assistive technologies. While the EAA itself is broad, covering websites, apps, and various digital services, its underlying standards draw heavily from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which have long been the reference point for accessible digital design.

For email specifically, this translates into a few concrete areas: 

• Text needs to be readable (sufficient contrast between text and background colors).
• Images need text alternatives (alt text) so that someone using a screen reader, or simply someone who has images turned off, still understands what’s being conveyed.
• The underlying structure of the email needs to make sense to assistive technology, not just to humans.

Practical accessibility improvements you can make today

Check your color contrast. A common accessibility issue in email design is text that looks fine to someone with typical vision but is difficult or impossible to read for people with low vision or certain types of color blindness, light gray text on a white background being a classic example. WCAG guidelines specify minimum contrast ratios between text and background colors, and there are free online contrast checker tools that let you test your color combinations in seconds.

Add meaningful alt text to images. Alt text serves two purposes: it allows screen readers to describe an image to someone who can’t see it, and it ensures your message still makes sense to anyone whose email client doesn’t load images by default (which is more common than you might think). The keyword is “meaningful”; alt text like “image123.jpg” or “banner” doesn’t help anyone. Alt text like “20% off all products, code SAVE20” actually conveys the message.

Don’t rely on color alone to convey meaning. If you’re using color to indicate something important, for example, red text for “sold out” or green for “in stock”, make sure that information is also conveyed through text or symbols, not color alone. This helps subscribers with color blindness, but it also helps anyone viewing your email in a context where colors don’t render as expected (such as dark mode, which can sometimes shift or invert colors unpredictably).

Use a logical structure with real headings. Screen readers rely on structural elements like headings to help users navigate content. If your email uses large, bold text to look like a heading but isn’t actually marked up as one, that visual hierarchy is invisible to assistive technology. Where your email platform supports it, using genuine heading elements (not just styled text) makes a meaningful difference.

Make sure your email works without images. Many email clients block images by default until a subscriber chooses to load them. If your entire message is conveyed through an image-based design, common in highly visual promotional emails, a subscriber who hasn’t loaded images sees nothing useful. Including real text that conveys your core message (not just as alt text, but as actual text content in the email) ensures your message gets through regardless.

Choose accessible font sizes and line spacing. Very small text, or text with cramped line spacing, is harder for everyone to read, but it’s a significant barrier for subscribers with low vision or reading-related disabilities. A minimum body text size (commonly recommended around 14-16px for email) and reasonable line spacing make a meaningful difference.

Make links descriptive. Links that just say “click here” or “read more” provide no context when read out of context by a screen reader (which often lists all links on a page). Descriptive link text, “Read our full guide to email accessibility”, is clearer for everyone and significantly more useful for assistive technology users.

Why accessible email also performs better

This is the part worth emphasizing: nearly every accessibility improvement listed above is also a general best practice for email performance.

Good color contrast makes your email easier to read quickly, which matters for subscribers scanning their inbox on a bright day or a low-quality screen, not just for subscribers with low vision. Meaningful alt text and text-based content that doesn’t rely on images mean your message gets through even when images are blocked, which affects a significant percentage of opens regardless of disability. Descriptive link text improves clarity for every subscriber, and clear structure helps anyone skimming an email on a small mobile screen, not just screen reader users.

In other words, accessibility and good design aren’t competing priorities; accessible design is, in large part, just good design, applied more rigorously and intentionally.

How to approach this as a small business

You don’t need to overhaul your entire email program overnight. A practical starting point is auditing your current template (the one you reuse most often) against the items above: check contrast, check whether images have alt text, check whether your message survives with images turned off, and check your link text.

From there, build accessibility checks into your normal pre-send review process, just as you might check for typos or broken links. Many email service providers are also building accessibility checks directly into their editors, so as those tools evolve, some of this work may become easier over time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to my business if I’m not based in the EU? 

The EAA is an EU regulation, so its direct legal requirements apply to organizations operating in or serving the EU market. However, its influence is broader: email service providers, design tools, and accessibility standards used globally are increasingly shaped by these requirements, making accessible design practices a general industry expectation.

What’s the easiest first step if I’ve never thought about email accessibility before? 

Start with color contrast and alt text; both are quick to check with free online tools and don’t require redesigning your templates from scratch. These two changes alone address some of the most common accessibility issues in email.

Do accessibility improvements require a complete redesign of my email templates? 

Not necessarily. Many improvements, such as adding alt text, adjusting color contrast, and writing more descriptive link text, can be made incrementally without changing your overall design or layout.

How do I know if my emails work with images turned off? 

Most email clients let you toggle image loading, or you can check by sending a test email to an account with image loading disabled. If your email’s core message is unreadable or confusing without images, that’s a sign to add more text-based content.

Are accessibility checkers built into email platforms reliable? 

Built-in accessibility checks are a helpful starting point and continue to improve, but they typically can’t catch everything; for example, whether alt text is actually meaningful (versus just present) often requires a human review. Use automated checks alongside a quick manual review for best results.