Newsletter Best Practices for Screen Reader Use

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Newsletter Best Practices for Screen Reader Use

Posted March 27, 2025

AudioEye

Posted March 27, 2025

A stylized newsletter with error icons across the page. In the background are words like "jargon," accessibility," and "language."
A stylized newsletter with error icons across the page. In the background are words like "jargon," accessibility," and "language."

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Jessica Phillips, an AudioEye A11iance Team Member, shares how marketers can create newsletters that are accessible and usable by screen reader users.

Traditionally, accessibility is thought to be most important in websites and apps. Yet, another digital material is often overlooked — something considered essential to business success, like apps and websites: email newsletters. 

We overlook them daily, sending some to the delete bin and briefly scrolling through others. Their contents vary from the local sale at the supermarket to the latest sports news. Yet, behind the facade of sender and subject, newsletters can hide countless accessibility woes, making it almost impossible for assistive technology users to keep up. To understand this perspective, a survey was conducted within the AudioEye alliance team. The results show ten common newsletter accessibility challenges, which we’ll discuss below.

 2. Some controls just do not work.

This is a problem for obvious reasons. If you do decide to click a link, a website should appear. However, for some screen reader users, this does not happen. Some common issues of this include:

  • Links do nothing when clicked.
  • Focus switches to a completely different part of the email and does not click the link.
  • “Unsubscribe Link” does nothing or will not take users off the email list.

 Some best practices:

  •  Make sure that all unsubscribe links will remove emails from the newsletter list.
  •  Test web and external clients to ensure links open and stay focused when clicked.

 3. Images and videos do not convey essential information.

Images can be one of the most challenging elements for screen readers, as they cannot see the picture and will still need to access a description of the image. Some common image challenges can include:

  • Alt text is not present, lacks details, or contains no punctuation.
  • Essential information, like event dates and promo codes, are conveyed in graphics, which makes it difficult to access or copy.
  • Videos may lack alternative text, or captions are in a different part of the email than the video or image.

 Some best practices:

  • Alt text should always be present, contain any text in the image, and be properly punctuated for easy reading.
  • Alt text should also contain details describing the important parts of images when no text can reproduce.
  • Videos should always contain alternative text or captions.
  • Keep the caption or transcript option close to the video so users can quickly find it.

 4. Tables.

The first question that should be asked is whether a table is necessary for your newsletter. Tables add a lot of additional text to screen reader navigation, which can obscure valuable information. Before reading the information in a table, the screen reader will read the column, row, and other nested table columns and rows, if there are any. Does this sound like a lot? The survey corroborates this. Some common issues that the A11iance team found include:

  • Dates and times were in tables, making them more challenging to find and understand.
  • Tables were placed inside of tables, so the screen reader had to read long lists of navigation details before getting the information. 
  • Multiple lines are in cells.
  • Cells are joined together with the cells next to them. 

 Some best practices:

  • Would it have been easier to find this information if the table had been absent?
  • Is the table nested inside another table? If so, ensure that each cell will read as part of only one table.

 5. Headings.

Headings are very important, and headings can make or break navigation for screen readers. Most people looking at a newsletter visually may focus on bolding and font choice. Screen reader users may not have this luxury and need other queues to read a newsletter easily. Some common heading and structure challenges can include:

  • No headings are present at all.
  • The entire newsletter is a single heading, including text and links.
  • Headings are all at the same level.
  • Headings are not related to the text that follows them.

 Some best practices:

  •  Follow a hierarchical heading structure, using heading levels 1, 2, etc.
  •  Make sure the heading is labeled correctly and describes the text after it.
  •  Ensure that the surrounding text, links, or images get left out of the heading.

 6. Formatting.

Some newsletters have formatting or special characters inside them, which can make them look visually appealing. To screen reader users, however, they can look like they are written in a foreign language. Some signs this is happening can include:

  • Strange symbols, letters, and numbers break up the text of a newsletter.
  • Every letter or group of letters of a specific type is replaced with a number.
  • Long strings of punctuation or emojis.

 Some best practices:

  • Write in plain text as much as possible.
  • If you use special formatting, check your formatting, preferably with a screen reader and several different email clients.

 7. URL's.

In a newsletter, URLs of links are often exposed, showing the full long-form link. This is a challenge for screen reader users, as URLs take a long time to read. It can also make it difficult for screen reader users to find preceding information because they need to listen to a very long link first.

 Some best practices:

  • Using long URLs is not preferred by screen reader users and should be avoided wherever possible.
  • If long URLs need to be used, ensure that at least two blank lines separate them from surrounding elements. 
  • All other information should be removed from the same line as the long URL, even in front.

 8. Availability of Information offline.

When surveyed, many AudioEye A11iance members strongly preferred marketers to include the complete article in newsletters. This can be for a couple of reasons:

  • Information is easier to access.
  • Information is available offline.
  • The reading experience is not broken up by needing to click a link.

This change would benefit more than just users of assistive technologies. It would also help people who need to access information offline because of unreliable Internet connections or who go offline regularly if the entire article text were included.

 9. Font and Visual Elements.

For low-vision users, fonts in newsletters can sometimes be hard to read. This may be because they are too small or written in a script that is too decorative. To combat this, use a slightly larger font or allow users to change the font.

10. Other convenience features for assistive technology users.

There were three other things identified that would make disabled users more likely to want to buy a product or read a newsletter. These include:

  • Putting the price of the product into the email rather than having to click elsewhere
  • Having ads placed at the bottom where they will not break up the reading experience.
  • Documents that are attached to newsletters should be accessible. This is a common complaint with PDFs and graphics especially.

From our results, it’s clear that the majority of accessibility issues experienced in newsletters and email marketing can be improved by keeping these three things in mind:

  •  Newsletters should have clean and simple formatting.
  •  Relevant information should be added if not present.
  •  Irrelevant information should be removed.

Considering these three principles when constructing newsletters will make a smoother reading experience for assistive technology users. You might even see improved engagement with your email campaigns if you prioritize accessibility. The benefits will extend to more than just these users. If newsletters are simplified for screen reader use, they will make them more straightforward for everyone to read.

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