Why Ignoring Email Accessibility is Hurting Your Business
Making an email easy to read for everyone, especially those with auditory, visual, motor, or cognitive disabilities, is known as email accessibility. It is an essential part of the user experience.
Providing a good email experience to the users is time-consuming. It requires appropriate designing, development, and rigorous testing to ensure the emails render correctly on different sized screens. Still, it does not ensure that people with disabilities would also be able to read those emails easily. Equal effort should be given to ensure the email renders on assistive devices like screen magnifiers (it enlarge parts of the screen to make content readable), or screen readers (it reads aloud the content of a screen using text-to-speech) for people with mobility limitations, visual impairment, and learning disabilities.
In today’s digital world, it is necessary to make experiences accessible to all, even if the costs are typically higher. In fact, it is mandatory to provide digital accessibility to everyone alike to avoid any potential risks of legal actions in the future.
Even if we leave aside the legal implications, it affects the reputation of a business. Poor practices with regards to accessibility can damage the goodwill of the brand. While serving each customer equally can make the brand stand apart and create the most valuable and long-lasting social impact. A brand’s commitment to go above and beyond doing the right things, always goes a long way, regardless of who is getting direct benefits out of it. On the other hand, poor practices, sub-standard user experiences result in losing out on a significant number of existing and potential customers.
The websites, applications, the internet, and its services are for everyone. The power lies in its inclusivity. If the organization went that extra mile to please users by giving them the best experience or just the recognition of being equal to their peers, it would create an everlasting impact in their lives. They will always remember and cherish it, even if it means more costs, more efforts, aggressive planning, and meticulous implementation at all levels. By not doing so, we are automatically leaving behind a massive audience. We are stopping them from having a typical experience of the digital space.
Accessibility boosts user experience, which enables your SEO efforts, and boosts rankings, and improves the brand value of the organization. Fact is, implementing accessibility means you are following proper coding standards. Just like you would help a cat stuck in a tree or give a hand to an elderly lady at the parking lot, you are extending your hand to each and everyone who wishes to enter the digital environment. It is the right thing to do, both ethically and morally, even if the business outcomes remain unchanged.
15% of the world’s population, which means at least one billion people have a recognized disability! Designing inclusive apps and software for them results in customer satisfaction and improved usability. Businesses also have the opportunity to reap the benefits out of this untapped territory and drive innovation.
Including more people in your business gives you access to a larger pool of new customers. It can efficiently market your products through email and other similar mediums. It is not possible to develop relationships with the community without giving anything to it in return. Moreover, the benefits that come with accessibility are way beyond any legal protections, like the goodwill it creates, the brand image it builds in the eyes of the customers.
Conclusion
Most businesses think they have a significant number of subscribers covered while conveniently overlooking the fact that few of them might be physically, visually, cognitively, and neurologically disabled. Designing emails that are fully accessible to all does take effort, but there’s no denying that it’s worth every penny. Business value and accessibility constitute a vital part of design and development. The overall email experience should not be limited to the customer’s disabilities. It must be accessible to everyone alike.