Top Tools for Testing Email Accessibility Before Hitting Send

You probably spend hours creating an appealing email with strong messaging, attention-grabbing imagery, and a catchy subject line. Then, you hit the “Send” button, hoping that your newsletter will delight your audience and improve conversions. But did you know that some of the recipients can’t read this message at all? The color contrast is too low, your text doesn’t make sense with screen readers, or maybe CTAs are too tiny and impossible to read on mobile devices? That’s the reality millions of people (including your subscribers) live in every day.

According to the WHO, 1.3 billion people live with some kind of disability, which means 1 in 6 of us. Part of these people are your subscribers who trust your brand and rely on assistive technologies to access digital content, yet optimizing for accessibility remains a challenge for many specialists. But there’s good news? You don’t need to spend a lot of time checking if your emails are accessible enough. With a variety of email accessibility testing tools, you can detect and fix any issues before your email lands in your subscribers’ inboxes.

In this article, you will learn why email accessibility testing matters, find tips on integrating accessibility testing into your workflow, and discover what tools can help you check everything, from color contrast to code validation.

Why Email Accessibility Testing Matters

Without email accessibility testing, you can unintentionally exclude a large number of your subscribers (e.g., those who use screen readers, have color blindness or low vision, and perceive your emails through voice commands):

• 1.7 billion people have limited motor skills or coordination. It means that it’s difficult or impossible for them to use a mouse and keyboard.
• 2.2 billion people have some kind of visual impairment.
• 3 billion people suffer from neurological and cognitive impairments. They affect concentration, attention, learning ability, and logical thinking.
• 6.2% of people in the United States have deafness or other serious hearing impairment. 
• 3% of the web is accessible to people with disabilities. Yes, only 3%. The majority of all content still presents barriers, so by paying attention to email accessibility testing, you are not just making a difference for your subscribers, you are outpacing 97% of businesses. 
• 99.89% of newsletters have serious or critical accessibility issues.

So why test?

1. Some accessibility issues are easy to miss and might look fine at first glance. Without testing tools, your newsletter might be unreadable to screen readers or challenging to navigate with a keyboard.
2. Even if you stuck to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standards while designing your email, it doesn’t guarantee flawless accessible content. For example, a confusing heading structure or an important image without alt text. You can miss these issues during a visual review, but it makes your email unreadable for subscribers relying on assistive technology. 

If you spot and fix these issues, you can:

• Boost subscriber experience for everyone.
• Drop the number of unsubscribes. 
• Showcase your company as a brand that values and acknowledges all people.

Testing Tools for Color Accessibility

Besides brand consistency, colors can also define whether a person understands your message as you intended or misses it. Poor color contrast makes your newsletters less accessible for all recipients, particularly those with color blindness or low vision. 

The higher the color contrast, the easier to perceive your email. Here is an example of how difficult it is to read text with low color contrast:

Here are some tools you can use to check your color choices: 

• WebAIM

This simple tool will help you estimate contrast ratios between a background color and text colors based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standards. Just enter your foreground and background colors to get a pass/fail grade for normal text, large text, and graphical objects.  

• Coblis

Do you want to experience how people with color blindness see your emails? You just have to upload an email screenshot to this color blindness simulator, and it will simulate various types of color blindness, including deuteranomaly (green—weak), protanopia (red-blind), and achromatopsia (monochromacy). Thus, you can spot areas where contrast isn't right and fix them before sending an email. 

Here is how people without color blindness see: 

And here is how people with deuteranopia (green-blind) see the same picture:

• Accessible Colors

This tool checks the contrast between your email’s text and background colors (for images, you can enter the color values manually). Besides checking your color contrast, the tool suggests accessible color combinations if yours fail. 

Using these tools doesn’t take much of your time, but a few extra minutes can make the real difference between a successful accessible email and a missed opportunity for both you and your subscribers. 

Testing Tools for Code Validation

When we talk about color contrast, it’s understandable how it can affect email accessibility. But what about email code? How can it prevent people with disabilities from interacting with your email? 

Poor HTML structure can affect keyboard navigation, confuse screen readers, or prevent assistive technologies from interpreting your content as you intended. With code validation tools, you can work on issues like missing heading tags or ARIA labels, unlabeled buttons, or a lack of alt text on imagery. 

Here are useful tools you can check out to validate the code of your newsletters: 

• Accessible Email

This tool is a great choice when you want to check if your email is compatible with screen readers and accessible enough for people with disabilities. It can highlight missing alt text, headings, and sections. The tool also defines the main language of your email to ensure correct pronunciation, lets browsers know how tables are used for layout, and shows an email preview.

• Accessibility Checker by Parcel

Parcel’s accessibility checker offers you more advanced features to ensure email accessibility. Besides checking alt text for images, ARIA labels, and if links have discernible text, it can also analyze lang attributes, semantic list structure, and LTR (left-to-right) and RTL (right-to-left) compliance.

It’s crucial to use code testing tools when you customize HTML instead of opting for pre-built accessible email templates. Thus, you will always know that your email doesn’t just look accessible but delivers an intended message to all recipients. 

But if you don’t have coding skills or just don’t want to work with HTML, you can replace testing tools with email design platforms like Email on Acid, Stripo, or Parcel that provide accessibility-friendly code by default.  

Testing Tools for General Email Accessibility

When color contrast and code validation are pieces of the puzzle, tools for general email accessibility enable you to complete the whole email check by analyzing how email performs across various devices, email clients, and assistive technologies.

Take a look at some general email accessibility tools to consider:

• Email on Acid

Email on Acid can analyze your email’s design and HTML and then edit the code for you so you don’t have to ask your developer to do it again or start from the very beginning. After assessing your email against the top accessibility standards, you can fix any issues found quickly. The tool also simulates how recipients with color blindness see your newsletter, tests screen reader compatibility, alt text, and color contrast. 

• Litmus

This testing platform can check your email for 40+ criteria, including alt text, language, content type, and table roles for screen readers, heading hierarchy, and text justification for recipients with cognitive disabilities. You can even use a screen reader transcript to listen to your newsletter recording and apply visual impairment filters. 

Best Practices for Integrating Accessibility Testing Into Your Workflow

Even though email testing tools are important, it’s also vital to build an effective process around them and embed accessibility into your daily workflow. Here is how you can do it without slowing down your team and other work processes:

• Build it into your QA checklist

Accessibility should not be an optional step but a must in your pre-send email review process, just as you conduct rendering tests and link checks. A simple checklist you can share with your team will do the job. You can include a color contrast check, code review, and screen reader testing.

• Automate what you can, but don’t skip manual testing

Automation can catch common accessibility errors we discussed above and let you fix them before sending an email. But still, automation isn’t flawless, so it’s always crucial to benefit from human testing. We recommend you listen to your emails with a screen reader, check if all interactive parts are keyboard-accessible, and ensure that CTA copy makes sense (e.g., not just “Learn more” but “Download this accessibility guide here”).

• Design with accessibility in mind from the start

Tweaking a finished email is much more challenging than creating accessible content from scratch. Pay attention to elements like font size, color contrast, and alt text during the design stage, not during the QA process.

Final Thoughts: Make Accessibility a Habit, Not a Chore

Don’t think about email accessibility as extra work—it’s all about providing people who trust your brand with inclusive communication.

The testing tools we recommended will help you spot and fix accessibility issues quickly, but don’t forget about manual testing that will detect errors automation can miss. Your email marketing list is not just about email addresses—it’s about people behind the screens. And when more people can read, interact with, and understand your newsletters, everyone wins, including your brand reputation. 

FAQs: Email Accessibility