DocumentationJourney OptimizerJourney Optimizer Guide

Design accessible content accessible-content

Last update: Mon Sep 22 2025 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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  • Beginner
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  • User

The European accessibility act is a directive designed to enhance the internal market for accessible products and services by eliminating barriers caused by differing national rules across Member States.

This regulation states that all digital communications, including emails, newsletters, PDFs, and downloadable content, should be accessible. When creating content for your recipients, you are therefore required to follow specific guidelines such as using accessible fonts, readable formats, and provide alternative text for images.

The Journey Optimizer Email Designer, which enables marketers to build content both for emails and landing pages, allows you to easily comply with this directive, based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, level AA.

In line with this, the best practices for designing accessible content with Journey Optimizer are listed below.

NOTE
This page is about making your content accessible to all your recipients, to make sure that people with disabilities can read, understand, and interact with your emails and landing pages designed with Journey Optimizer.
On the other hand, the accessibility of the Journey Optimizer interface itself is detailed in this section.

Ensure text readability text-readability

Leverage the Styles tab of the Text component to ensure your text is readable, such as using a proper color contrast and simple fonts. Learn more

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For fonts and text, make sure you follow the guidelines below:

Font selection

  • Use sans-serif fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Helvetica, or Open Sans.
  • Avoid serif, cursive, or decorative fonts in body content.
  • Stick to a limited font set for consistency and fallback (for example: font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;).

Font sizing

  • Ensure a minimum font size of 16px for body text.
  • Use proper hierarchy for headings.

Color contrast

  • Maintain a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and background.
  • For large text (≥24px or bold 18px), ensure at least a 3:1 contrast.
  • Avoid light gray or pastel text on white backgrounds.
  • Do not rely on color alone to convey meaning, but instead use underlines, icons, etc.

Text accessibility

  • Avoid text in images.
  • Do not use all caps in body text.
  • Ensure text can be zoomed up to 200% without breaking layout.

Ensure visual accessibility visual-accessibility

To make sure your content is visually accessible, follow the best practices below:

  • Avoid using color-only indicators for important information.
  • Use text labels or icons to ensure clarity.
  • Optimize your design for mobile and responsive layouts, ensuring buttons are large and properly spaced.
  • Regularly test across devices and screen sizes to maintain accessibility.

In Journey Optimizer, the size and spacing of the different elements in your content can be further refined using the styling parameters and attributes from the Email Designer Styles pane. Learn more

For example, you can update the background, or change the margins, padding and alignment to improve the visual accessibility of your content. Learn more

{width="80%"}

Moreover, the Journey Optimizer Email Designer enables you to preview and optimize design for different devices and screen sizes. At any time you can Switch to live view in order to check how your content might render on various device sizes.

{width="80%"}

CAUTION
The live view is a generic preview designed to compare how the rendering might look across various device sizes. The final rendering may vary according to the recipient’s email client.

Use alternative text for images alt-text

Use the Image component to provide alternative text for images. Learn more

{width="90%"}

For effective alternative text in digital products, follow the guidelines below:

  • Describe the image’s purpose concisely and contextually.
  • Avoid redundant phrases like “Image of …” and use empty alt text for decorative images.
  • For icons with meaning, provide meaningful labels, and for complex images, use a brief alt text plus a longer description elsewhere.

Use readable format readable-format

Use the Email Designer relevant structure and content components, as well as the options in the Styles pane, to organize your content in a clear, logical and concise way that is accessible to all.

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  • Use structured, semantic HTML with proper headings, paragraphs, lists, and tables.
  • Ensure content follows a logical left-to-right, top-to-bottom flow.
  • Use clear, concise language.
  • Provide alternative formats for PDFs and infographics.
  • Allow text resizing and reflow, and ensure typography is readable with adequate color contrast in all formats.

Ensure content readability readability

To be readable, your content must be clear, well-structured, and usable by everyone, including people with visual, cognitive, or reading difficulties and those using assistive technologies. Some points to consider when creating accessible content include:

  • Keeping sentences to around 20 words or less.
  • Edit your copy to be direct and to the point.
  • Use active voice to keep the sentence structure simpler.
  • Avoid slang, jargon, or regional words that some people might be unfamiliar with.

To evaluate your email readability, you can use the popular Flesch Reading Ease test, which can be found in Microsoft Word and calculates how easy your content is to read on a scale of 0-100.

Test your content test

To verify your content’s accessibility, you can use the testing capabilities provided by Journey Optimizer. They are not specifically designed to check if your content is fully accessible, but they can provide a first level of verification.

  • Preview your content using test profiles. Learn how

  • Use the Email rendering option that leverages Litmus to simulate your designs across major email clients (Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook) and see if text, colors and images make your content accessible.

  • Send proofs to test the rendering of your content before sending it to your real audience. Learn how

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To check in a more consistent way if your content is reliably accessible, go for specific external tools such as:

Use dark mode dark-mode

Dark mode enhances visual accessibility for users with light sensitivity or visual impairments, for an improved viewing experience.

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Amongst the best practices for designing content in dark mode, use transparent PNGs or SVGs, set appropriate meta tags and CSS, and provide accessible fallback styling if dark mode is not supported. Finally, make sure your emails render correctly in dark mode by testing all email content and UI elements in both light and dark modes.

Detailed best practices specific to dark mode, including guidelines to ensure accessibility, are listed in this section.

Use specific attributes for accessibility attributes

Language attributes language

When creating designs, include the lang (language) and dir (text direction) attributes in the content body. These attributes help assistive technologies such as screen readers to interpret and present your content in an appropriate manner.

  • The lang attribute indicates the language of the email to assistive technologies, ensuring that words are pronounced correctly.

    accordion
    Examples

    Example for English:

    code language-none 
    <body lang="en">

    Example for French:

    code language-none 
    <body lang="fr">

  • The dir attribute specifies text direction. Most languages, including English and French, are read left-to-right (ltr), whereas languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are read right-to-left (rtl).

    accordion
    Examples

    Example for English (left-to-right):

    code language-none 
    <body lang="en" dir="ltr">

    Example for Arabic (right-to-left):

    code language-none 
    <body lang="ar" dir="rtl">

Screen readers rely on the lang attribute to apply the correct pronunciation rules, while text direction ensures content flows naturally for left-to-right or right-to-left languages. Without these attributes, users may experience confusing reading order or mispronunciation. Consequently, always wrap your email body with the appropriate lang and dir attributes.

TIP
If your email contains multiple languages, assign the appropriate language attributes to specific sections (such as <table> or <td> blocks) to ensure each part is read correctly.

Tables tables

In HTML contents, tables are often used for layout. By default, screen readers treat every <table> as a data table, announcing rows, columns, and structure. This can be confusing if the table is only used for formatting.

Add role="presentation" (or role="none") to layout tables to ensure assistive technologies skip their structure and focus only on the actual content.

Example – Layout table (with role="presentation")
code language-none 
<table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">

  <tr>

    <td align="center">

      <h1>Hello World</h1>

      <p>Welcome to our newsletter</p>

    </td>

  </tr>

</table>

The screen readers read:
“Hello World. Welcome to our newsletter.” (No mention of rows, columns, or table)

Example – Data table (without role="presentation")
code language-none 
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">

  <tr>

    <th scope="col">Name</th>

    <th scope="col">Score</th>

  </tr>

  <tr>

    <td>Alice</td>

    <td>95</td>

  </tr>

  <tr>

    <td>Bob</td>

    <td>88</td>

  </tr>

</table>

The screen readers read:
“Table with 2 columns and 3 rows.”

“Name, Alice. Score, 95.”

“Name, Bob. Score, 88.”

TIP
Use role="presentation" exclusively for layout tables. For data tables, retain the semantic <table> structure so screen readers can correctly announce headers and relationships.

Text for links links

Screen readers read out links using their text. If a link is labeled only ‘Click here’ or ‘Read more,’ users of assistive technologies won’t know the destination. To ensure accessibility, they need descriptive text that clearly indicates the target or action.

Use the Email Designer to add a link to your content and edit the label to make it discernible (visible) and descriptive (clear about purpose). Avoid vague labels like ‘here’ or ‘more’.

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Example – Good link (descriptive):
code language-none 
<p>Learn more in the

<a href="https://adobe.com/release-notes">August release notes</a>.

</p>

The screen readers read:
“Link, August release notes.”

Example – Bad link (not descriptive)
code language-none 
<p>Learn more about our new features.

  <a href="https://adobe.com/release-notes">Click here</a>.

</p>

The screen readers read:
“Link, click here.” (Provides no context out of reading order)

Provide keyboard navigation and focus support keyboard

Providing keyboard navigation and focus support allows people who cannot use a mouse to fully access and interact with content. It also improves overall usability by giving all users a clear and consistent way to move through information.

  • Focus via keyboard

    • Ensure all interactive elements (such as buttons, checkboxes, links) have tabindex="0" so they are included in the natural tab order.

    • Allow navigation using the Tab and arrow keys (↑ ↓ ← →), which should visibly highlight the focused element.

  • Custom focus styling

    • Apply clear and distinguishable styles for focusing on actionable elements:

      accordion
      Example (CSS)
      code language-none 
      
[tabindex="0"] : focus {

outline: 2px solid #00AEEF;  /* Cyan border */

background-color: #20CEFF;   /* Optional background */

}

    • Ensure focus indicators meet the WCAG 2.2 focus appearance standards, including:

      • Minimum area: 2 CSS pixel thick outline.

      • Contrast ratio: ≥ 3:1 between focused and unfocused state.

  • Keyboard activation support

    • Ensure checkboxes and buttons respond to the Enter and Space keys.

    • Validate interaction using keyboard alone:

      • Enter or Space should toggle checkboxes.

      • Enter or Space should trigger buttons.

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