Creating an Accessible Outlook Email

Email is a vital communication tool. It is essential to ensure the information is accessible to everyone. Creating an accessible email is an important step towards ensuring your message is legible and comprehensible to people with hearing, visual, motor, cognitive, or other impairments.

Tips to create an accessible email:

1. Clear and concise subject line: A clear and descriptive subject line will provide useful information to the recipient on what the email is all about.
2. Plain language: Using simple and clear language in email will make it easier for the people with cognitive disabilities to understand the message. Avoid using jargon or complex terminology. Use content style guide on How to use Plain language for effective accessible information and readable for everyone.
3. Structure: Use headings, bullet points and a list to organize information. This will make it easier to read and help people using screen readers to navigate through the email. You should also break up text into short paragraphs. “Use the built-in Microsoft heading styles, bullet points and lists to organize information.” Some people create these manually and they are not accessible.
4. Descriptive links: Rather than using generic phrases like “click here”, “register here”, “go here” etc.; use descriptive phrases that provide the title of the destination page.
5. Avoid using tables: Avoid tables as it has fixed width that might be difficult to read for people who use magnifiers. If you use tables, use the following guidelines to make tables accessible.
6. Alternative texts: Add Alt text to provide descriptive text for images and graphics, so that users with screen readers can read the text to describe the image to users who are visually impaired. The IT Accessibility Office also recommends alt text should be no longer than 140 characters including spaces for English and 170 characters for French. If it needs to be more than the maximum include a long description.
7. Accessible font and size: Use a font that is easily readable and avoid using small font sizes. Sans-serif fonts like Calibri, Arial or Verdana are generally easier to read than serif fonts like Times New Roman. Keep text at reasonable size typically 12 points, and line-spacing should be 1.5 for creating emails.
8. Color selection: Avoid using color alone to convey meaning as this can be difficult for visually impaired individuals. Text colour contrast requirement is 4.5:1 or greater. Non-text colour contrast requirement is 3:1 or greater. To ensure the emails complies with contrasts ratio, install the Color Contrast Analyser tool on your desktop. This can also be requested through National Service Desk.
9. High contrast with text and background: Use high contrast with text and background colors to make it easier to read the text.
10. Attachments: If it is necessary to attach file to an email, make sure the attached document is accessible. Learn to make content accessible for people with disabilities.
11. Check accessibility in Outlook: The accessibility checker tool review makes it easy to identify the accessibility errors in the document and suggests resolving the issues.
12. Proofing tools: Always set the proofing language which identifies if the language is French or English while writing or editing your emails. You can turn on automatic language detection that enables the proofing tool for the language.

Accessibility Tip: Do not use vCard Some Outlook users prefer to use vCard or electronic business cards as their signatures, but screen readers cannot read the information on vCard and therefore are considered as inaccessible.

Did you know, you can request people to send you an accessible email?

The IT Accessibility Office continuously provides training on how to make your Outlook emails accessible, Enroll for the courses on Creating Accessible Content Using Microsoft 365.

Guides and Resources:

• Make outlook email accessible to people with disabilities
• Accessibility best practices for emails
• Improving email accessibility
• Further information on how to write in plain language
• Rules for the Accessibility checker
• Refer to the Microsoft Document Compliance Checklist to review/verify if your Microsoft Office document is accessible.

Don't have MS 365 Suite or Outlook 365 yet? The installation suite is now accessible and can be requested through the National Service Desk (NSD)

For any assistance or inquiries, please reach out to EDSC.TI.SENSIBILISATION-AWARENESS.IT.ESDC@hrsdc-rhdcc.gc.ca