An accessible email is made up of many parts that work together to create a message that is easy for any subscriber to read and understand. Of all the accessibility checks you should perform on your email, there is one that arguably makes the biggest difference for subscribers with vision issues: adjusting the table role to “Presentation.” This quick fix can make a huge difference for email subscribers who use screen readers. Because it’s one of the most important parts of accessible email code, we’ve included a step in our new campaign pre-check that checks table roles. The tool scans your email tables and makes sure they’re correctly set to “Presentation.” If they’re not, the app makes the correction for you.
The code
To make your tables accessible, you will need to customize the code for your tables, which is located in the body of the email. You will need to add the following code to each table: role=”presentation” Inside your table code, this will look like this:
Why are table roles important for accessibility?
Many people with visual impairments use assistive technologies such as screen readers to have their emails read to them. Users with temporary disabilities (such as broken hands, hospitalization, etc.) can also use these technologies to have an email read to them. Setting table roles to “Presentation” uses ARIA (Assistive Rich Internet Applications) to instruct screen readers how to interpret the table so that they can read it in a way that the subscriber can understand. If tables are not set to “Presentation,” the screen reader interprets the table as data, which means it reads the HTML to the user. Here's an example of what this might sound like (from a recent accessibility webinar we recently hosted with Net Atlantic):
Not pleasant, is it? This is an email experience that is certainly not ideal. However, if you set the tables to “Presentation”, the screen reader will read the contents of the table:
Note that if you use a table to display data, you should leave this setting disabled because you still want it to be read as data tables.
This is just the beginning
As mentioned, table roles are just one piece of the email accessibility puzzle. There are many more steps needed to make your emails truly accessible for users with disabilities or visual impairments. We recommend reading these posts to learn more about creating accessible emails: Ready to get started? Email on Acid's new Campaign Precheck tool walks you through nine key email accessibility steps and adjusts your HTML in the app for you. Learn more about Campaign Precheck or try it out today.
Author: The Email on Acid Team
The Email on Acid content team is made up of digital marketers, content creators, and real email geeks. Connect with us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook, and tweet us at @EmailonAcid on Twitter for more interesting stuff and great conversations about email marketing.
