Tips for more accessible email

- Did you know that the average number of received emails per day is 121? The average number you send each day is probably about 40. Now, is it important that every email you send is it accessible? Let's consider the life of your email. You send that to your team. They spot something interesting that others need to read. They forward it. That content you created then gets copied and pasted into a report and shared across the entire company. Now consider how many people with a disability might access that information at each stage. The longer that email lives in your ecosystem, the bigger the chance it ends up on the desk of someone with a disability. One in six of the general population have a disability. So it goes without saying your email matters. This is your introduction to the Accessibility Checker in office. You'll find it right there in the review tab in Outlook and elsewhere. When you run this, it will tell you when images are not described, add warnings on embedded video, check scan order on objects. All of the fixes for these issues are in line. You just need to make those corrections before you send. You might be interested to know that we use computer vision to describe images in Office 365. AI does some of the work for you here but more often than not, you'll want to amend the automated text for a personal description. There are a few things you can do to create more accessible emails by default. First, change your template or as you might know it better your signature. Banners, logos, awards should have a description behind them. Photos of signatures should have an item description to help people know they're not missing critical info. Also check for color contrast while you're here and maybe up your default font size to 12, no one wants tiny fonts. You might also want to tell everyone in your email footer that you send accessible mail. Here's the text I use. This mail is designed to be accessible to people with disabilities. Learn more about how you too can increase the reach and impact of your work and I linked to a relevant training page, Office.com for people to go learn more. One more thing, did you know that you can request inclusive content? There's a terrific mail tip in Outlook that informs anyone sending you a mail that you prefer inclusive content. This is not just for someone with a disability. If you're responsible for web content or customer facing documentation, why not delegate responsibility for accessibility to your whole workforce? So there you have it, now go it fourth and make your emails more accessible, impactful and inclusive.