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How do I create accessible Emails and Email Campaigns?
- Design Accessible Emails
- Optimizing Images for Emails (need to update this resource)
- Create Accessible Emails (from DoIT)
- Accessibility and Email Campaigns
Effectively Use Images in Your Emails
Best Practices for Images in Emails
- Images should be less than 30% of the email content
- Emails with 1-3 images result in best engagement. (source)
- Emails with lots of images take longer to load. If an email takes too long to load, the user might give up trying to read it.
- All the important messaging should be in the body of the email as text
- In other words, don’t put all of your images, text, and links into something like Microsoft Publisher or a PDF and send it off.
- Image-only emails are commonly associated with bulk spammers, and could send your email to the spam folder.
- All text within images must be in the alternative text of the image.
- This is an accessibility requirement.
- This is also helpful when an email client automatically turns off your images, or they don’t load in the inbox, alt text allows your reader to understand what they should be seeing.
Image File Types
JPGs
- Preferred image type
- They tend to be able to compress to a smaller file size, which results in a faster loading email
- Run the images through TinyPNG to reduce the file size
PNGs
- Should only be used if a transparent background is necessary
- Run the images through TinyPNG to reduce the file size
GIFs
- Keep file size under 400 kb - 500 kb
- Most important frame should be first for a small fraction of a second.
- This is what people will see if their email client does not support GIFs
More Resources
Web Accessibility Tools
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