It can be really confusing when you hear different solutions from different sources in our industry. We always want it to be super simple, but at the end of the day there’s a lot of nuance to email specifically, and then there’s also a lot of nuance within accessibility, and that can be hard to sort out.
Structural content is the bones of your html file and are already described by Assistive technologies so you don’t need to label them.
Color contrast issues are one of the most common accessibility failures I see – both in my accessibility audits and just as a person existing on this planet. It’s absolutely everywhere.
Let’s talk about dynamic images – oh yea! Everyone loves them, no one wants to think about alt text. Le sigh.
Earlier in my career, I was taught to use weird text versions of business-related character entities in the alt attribute. I was told that alt attributes could only have “plain text” and that special characters did not work.
When I’m testing, I am usually testing on two main things: keyboard-based navigation and screen readers. Some screen readers change the functions on a keyboard or the tap interface of mobile devices and there’s a lot of variation in how all of these work.
In part 3 we’re getting into the very granular details of how we can’t make interactive content accessible and why we’re so limited in email.
This week we’re getting into the specific experiences that interactive elements create for assistive technology users and some of the ways we can get around them.
I have dug into this topic and picked apart numerous examples of interactive content and it just can’t happen and I wanted to break this apart so that you can either do your own digging or review purported solutions for yourself.
Color contrast is at once one of the easiest accessibility criteria to meet and one of the most overlooked.