The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is officially in effect. For marketers, this is more than just another regulation to monitor. Instead, it’s a fundamental shift in how digital communications, especially email, must be designed and delivered.
The EAA requires businesses offering digital products or services to customers in the EU, regardless of where the business is based, to ensure that their experiences are accessible to all users, including people with disabilities. This includes email, one of the most relied-on and ubiquitous forms of digital communication.
Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at Sinch.
Why accessible email matters now
The goal of the EAA is simple: eliminate digital barriers for people with disabilities. But the impact is much wider. Accessibility improves the experience for anyone using mobile devices, dealing with temporary impairments (like a broken wrist or eye strain) or simply multitasking in a distracting environment. Making content easier to view, navigate, and interact with benefits everyone.
The business case is equally clear. According to the World Health Organisation there are 1.3 billion people globally living with a disability, around 16% of the world’s population. Of those, Sinch estimates that more than 700 million are email users. If your email campaigns aren’t accessible, that’s a large segment of your audience being excluded, either partially or entirely.
If you look at something that’s seemingly simple like screen-readers, they often struggle to help vision-impaired users because of the way emails are formatted. And when you consider that the global email marketing market was worth $6.13 billion in 2024, with an annual growth rate of 16%, accessibility isn’t just a compliance necessity, it’s a growth opportunity.
EAA is setting a new standard
The EAA points directly to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the technical standard businesses should follow. WCAG AA-level conformance is now the de facto benchmark for accessible email, which means every marketing message, transactional update, or customer support notification must meet certain baseline requirements.
Some of the core principles include:
Perceivable content: Use high color contrast, provide alt text for images, and ensure text is resizable and legible.
Operable interfaces: Emails should be fully navigable via keyboard, without requiring a mouse or touchscreen.
Understandable structure: Employ semantic HTML with correct heading tags and logical reading order to support assistive technologies.
Robust compatibility: Emails must work reliably with screen readers and other assistive software.
What does this mean for businesses?
For email marketers, adapting to the EAA means rethinking everything from design workflows to quality assurance (QA) processes. It’s no longer enough for a campaign to look good—it has to work well for everyone.
This means moving away from overly decorative layouts and toward structure-driven, semantic design. Emails should use proper heading levels, clear paragraph breaks, and bullet points where needed to aid comprehension. Avoid using tags to convey meaning—these may not be interpreted correctly by screen readers.
Alternative (Alt) text must be provided for every image, especially when images are used to communicate important information. And marketers should avoid using color alone to differentiate or emphasize content. Labels, icons, or patterns should be added for clarity.
Font size and spacing also matter. Small, tightly spaced text is difficult to read, particularly on mobile devices. Designing for accessibility often means designing for better mobile UX as well.
Testing for accessibility
Fortunately, many tools are now available to help teams meet these requirements. Marketing platforms have introduced accessibility-friendly templates, integrated accessibility checks, and automated scanning tools like Sinch’s Mailgun Inspect. These tools evaluate emails against dozens of accessibility factors, flagging issues before a message is sent.
Deliverability and accessibility: a dual challenge
Accessibility intersects with another growing challenge in email: deliverability. According to our research, 88% of email senders don’t fully understand what their delivery rate measures, and 39% rarely or never clean their contact lists.
This means businesses may already be losing messages before they even reach the inbox. Layer in poor accessibility, and the problem magnifies. If an email isn’t delivered, and if it’s not accessible even when it is, the message—and the opportunity—is lost twice over.
Your chance to lead, not just comply
For industries like banking, insurance, healthcare, and utilities, where digital services are increasingly preferred over in-person ones, the stakes are especially high. A visually impaired customer who can’t read their bank statement or a user with dyslexia struggling through a billing email isn’t just a usability issue, it’s now a compliance risk.
Yet the most forward-looking companies see this as an opportunity. Accessibility isn’t just about meeting minimum standards, it’s about demonstrating inclusion, improving engagement, and future-proofing digital strategy.
By acting now, marketers can comply with regulation, enhance their brand reputation and reach wider audiences more effectively. In an age where customer experience defines loyalty, accessible email isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.
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