Newsletter Accessibility: Tips for Email Marketing

This guide gives an honest assessment of the legal situation for email accessibility, uses current figures to show where emails fail today, and offers practical tips on structure, text, images, contrast and technology. Finally, you will learn how to check a newsletter before sending it.

Why accessibility matters in newsletters

An accessible newsletter reaches more people. According to Germany's Federal Statistical Office, just over 7.8 million people with a severe disability lived in Germany on 31 December 2025, or 9.4 percent of the population (press release of 13 July 2026). 79 percent of them are 55 or older. For many shops, this group is a firm part of their customer base.

On top of that come customers without an officially recognised disability who still face limitations: declining eyesight with age, a reading difficulty, a small smartphone display in bright sunlight. Accessibility helps everyone who wants to take in an email quickly. The benefit for your marketing is direct: only people who understand your content can respond to it. How inclusion can affect conversions is covered in our article More conversion through inclusion.

The benefits for your email marketing

Accessibility in newsletters is not extra effort but a mark of quality. Businesses that design accessible newsletters gain four advantages.

• ✓ Reach: More recipients can read and use your offers, including people with disabilities who rely on assistive tools.
• ✓ Readability: A clear design helps everyone who reads emails on the go or only skims them.
• ✓ Efficiency: Build accessibility into your template once and every new newsletter benefits.
• ✓ A seamless experience: When both email and shop are accessible, customers do not hit a break between inbox and website.

There are no reliable figures yet on the effect on open or click rates, so we do not quote any here. The benefits follow directly from the barriers shown further below: what recipients with impairments cannot perceive, they cannot use either.

Does the BFSG apply to newsletters?

Whether the BFSG requires newsletters to be accessible has not yet been settled (as of 10/27/2026). Since 28 June 2025, the act has applied to services in electronic commerce, among others, meaning online shops selling to consumers. In our research we found no statement from an authority and no court ruling specifically on emails. Expert opinions differ:

• ✓ IT-Recht Kanzlei (as of 10 March 2025): In this law firm's view, marketing newsletters are not covered because they cannot be used to place orders or make payments.
• ✓ Kanzlei Plutte (as of 27 June 2025): It is disputed whether free offers such as signing up for a newsletter are covered. The firm itself leans towards free offers not being covered, but advises interpreting the BFSG broadly if in doubt.
• ✓ German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW, May 2025): The association considers digital communication such as emails to be affected by the new requirements, without distinguishing between promotional and transactional emails.

Our assessment: There is a strong case that purely promotional newsletters are not directly covered. The path that follows is a different matter: the landing pages and product pages a newsletter links to are part of the service for shops within scope. For the sign-up form itself, the question is disputed, as the opinions above show. For transactional emails such as order confirmations, which are closely tied to the purchase, the situation is open. Since shops usually use the same templates for newsletters and transactional emails, it makes practical sense to ensure accessibility in all emails, regardless of how the BFSG question is eventually answered. If you are unsure whether your business is affected, you will find the criteria on our knowledge page Who is affected by the law. It does not replace a legal review of your individual case.

Where emails fail today

Email accessibility has a lot of catching up to do: almost no email is free of barriers today. For its Accessibility Report 2026, the Email Markup Consortium ran automated checks on 376,348 HTML emails between May 2025 and May 2026. 99.88 percent had at least one serious or critical issue, and only 8 emails from three senders passed every check. The table shows the most common issues.

Inbox technology adds to the problem. According to the same report, none of the 43 email clients tested supports all 37 accessibility features examined. Apple Mail on macOS reaches 34 of 37, Gmail 15 to 17 depending on the version, and Outlook 8 to 25 depending on the version. Accessibility in emails therefore mainly means simple, robust technology that works everywhere.

Tips for structure and text

A clear structure is the foundation of accessibility in every newsletter. Blind readers who use a screen reader jump from heading to heading, just as they do on websites. The following tips help you design accessible newsletters and simplify production:

• ✓ Use real headings: Set a main heading and subheadings as HTML headings, not just as bold text. This gives the email a structure that semantic HTML makes recognisable to assistive technology.
• ✓ Key information first: Put the most important content, such as the offer or key message, in the first paragraph. Many readers only look at the beginning.
• ✓ Short sentences and simple words: The BVDW recommends short, clear sentences. This improves readability for everyone, including people with cognitive impairments or limited language skills.
• ✓ Readable font: The BVDW names 14 pixels as the minimum size for body text. Sufficient line spacing and left-aligned paragraphs improve readability further.
• ✓ Text instead of images: Make sure important information such as discount codes, deadlines or prices appears as real text in the email, not inside a graphic. This is the easiest accessibility win.

How to simplify your wording is covered in our article Plain language or easy language. For longer content, a note such as "In short" at the top helps readers see straight away what it is about.

Tips for images, links and buttons

For accessibility, every informative image needs alternative text and every link a meaningful label. Almost every second email in the Email Markup Consortium report had images without alternative text. If images do not load in the inbox, recipients without disabilities also see only the alt text.

• ✓ Describe informative images: A product image gets a short description of the product, colour and key feature. If there is text in the image, its wording belongs in the alt text.
• ✓ Leave decorative images empty: Dividers, ornamental graphics and spacers get an empty alt attribute so that screen readers skip them.
• ✓ Name links clearly: Use descriptive link text such as "Shop the autumn collection" instead of "click here". According to the report, 71.23 percent of emails had links without discernible text, often linked images without alt text. Our glossary has more on accessible links.
• ✓ Make buttons large enough: Call-to-action buttons should be easy to tap on a smartphone and contain their label as real text, not as a graphic.
• ✓ Use animations sparingly: The BVDW advises avoiding blinking or flickering content. Animated GIFs should not contain anything that is missing without the animation.

Why good alt text also matters for visibility is explained in our article Alt text: why it is crucial for SEO and accessibility. The same alt text tips apply to your website.

Tips for contrast and design

Weak colours are the second big problem after missing alt text: 58.48 percent of the emails tested had insufficient colour contrast. The benchmark is WCAG, which requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text. Use the SiteCockpit contrast checker for your brand colours to design text and buttons that stay readable for people with low vision.

Also pay attention to dark mode, which many recipients now use. Many inboxes change colours themselves in dark mode, and according to the report many clients do not support the prefers-color-scheme query. Switch on dark mode in your tests as well and check whether logo, buttons and text remain clearly visible on a dark background. Ideally, check colours when building the template, not just before sending. Information must never rely on colour alone: a red price also needs the word "reduced" or the struck-through old price. That good design and accessibility go together is shown in our article Accessible design is not a compromise.

Technology: HTML emails for screen readers

The most common accessibility defects are technical and can be fixed once in the template. If you produce newsletters with a fixed template, every send benefits. Many businesses use the template of their email service provider. Check whether it meets these points, or have your agency implement them in the template:

• ✓ Declare the language: The lang attribute (for example lang="en") belongs on the <html> element and on the content area so that screen readers choose the right pronunciation.
• ✓ Mark layout tables: Many emails are built from tables. With role="presentation", assistive technology does not read them out as data tables.
• ✓ Set a title: A <title> element with the subject line helps when the email is opened in a browser.
• ✓ Think in one column: Use a single-column layout. It creates a logical reading order and works on a smartphone without adjustments.

According to the report, results for attributes such as lang and alt are gradually improving. Even so, all 10,566 emails tested that were sent via three widely used email and shop platforms failed the automated check. So do not rely on your tool, check the result. That way accessibility becomes the standard rather than the exception.

Tips for testing before you send

A short accessibility check before each send finds most barriers. Put together a fixed checklist and use it for every campaign:

• ✓ Turn off images: Open the test email with images disabled. If the message is still clear, your alt text and content are fine.
• ✓ Listen with a screen reader: Use free programs such as NVDA on Windows or VoiceOver on a Mac, which the BVDW recommends for testing. Listen to whether headings, links and buttons are announced sensibly.
• ✓ Check several inboxes: Test at least Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, on desktop and smartphone, and once in dark mode.
• ✓ Zoom in: Zoom to 200 percent. Text must not be cut off, and it must remain readable.

A practical scenario: A shop sends its Black Friday newsletter as one large image containing the discount code. A customer using a screen reader only hears "image, banner-final". The same newsletter with a heading, alt text for the product image and the code as real text reaches every recipient, and they can even copy the code. For marketing, the first version is doubly frustrating, because the code was the reason for sending. Accessibility costs no extra effort here, just a different way of building the email.

SiteCockpit: accessibility beyond the inbox

An accessible newsletter does little for people with disabilities if the page behind it has barriers. Every click leads to your website, and for shops within scope that is where the part covered by the BFSG begins: landing page, product page, cart. The newsletter sign-up form should also be accessible, even though it is disputed whether the law covers it.

• ✓ easyMonitoring: continuously monitors the website your newsletters link to and shows issues such as missing labels in the sign-up form or weak contrast as prioritised tasks.
• ✓ easyLanguage: converts texts into plain or easy language, for example for readers with learning difficulties. You can use the result directly in your CMS or email editor.
• ✓ easyAlt: generates alt text for the images on your website, such as the product images you also feature in your newsletter.

Use the dashboard to see the conformance scores of your pages over time and spot whether a campaign landing page has introduced new barriers.

What makes sense now

Whether the BFSG covers your newsletter directly is open. What is clear: accessible emails reach more people, including customers with disabilities, and most improvements cost little because they are built into the template once. No reason to panic, but a good time to review and redesign your own template.

• ✓ Assess the current state: Test your last newsletter and an order confirmation with images turned off and with a screen reader.
• ✓ Improve the template: Implement the language attribute, headings, alt text, link text and contrast cleanly in the template once. These tips work in any common newsletter tool.
• ✓ Keep it in view: Use every send for a short check and review the linked pages on your website regularly.

Accessibility starts with the template. Proceed step by step and begin with the template you use most often. For the pages your emails lead to, easyMonitoring keeps the status permanently in view.