What is an email accessibility checker?
An email accessibility checker scans your email for barriers that stop subscribers with disabilities from reading, navigating or acting on your messages. It flags issues like missing alt text, poor colour contrast and broken heading structure, testing your email against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the international standard for digital accessibility.
It automates detection of the usual culprits: images with no alt text, contrast that’s too low to read, a layout built as one large image with nothing to navigate, vague link text like ‘click here’, and headings that skip levels and break screen-reader navigation. One limit worth knowing: an automated checker confirms alt text exists, but it can’t tell you whether that alt text is useful. ‘banner.jpg’ passes the check and helps no one, so human judgement still confirms the descriptions are meaningful.
Why an email accessibility checker matters
About 1 in 4 US adults live with a disability, according to the CDC, and many rely on screen readers, magnification, or other assistive technology to read email. When a campaign isn't built with them in mind, a beautifully designed email can reach a long-time customer as nothing but 'Image. Image. Link.' with no offer and no way to act. That's lost engagement and lost revenue, and inaccessible, image-heavy emails also drag on deliverability and load time.
A few of the benefits of checking accessibility before you send:
- You reach more of your list: subscribers using assistive technology can actually read and act on the email instead of deleting it.
- Better deliverability and load times: clean, text-based structure beats a wall of images, both for inbox providers and slow connections.
- A clearer experience for everyone: larger text, real contrast, and descriptive links help every reader, including the customer on a small phone screen or a slow connection.
Why choose Klaviyo for accessible email
Klaviyo helps you build accessible email from the start, and pairs with a dedicated accessibility tool for the formal WCAG scan. Klaviyo is the autonomous B2C CRM, so the accessible choices, alt text, contrast, and structure are part of building the email in the first place, not a step you bolt on at the end. You design and test in one place, which makes the accessible choice the easy default instead of the thing you skip under deadline.
Alt text built into every image block
In Klaviyo's drag-and-drop email editor, the alt text field sits right on the image block, so a description is part of adding the image rather than a setting you dig for later. You can make it a rule: no image ships without alt text.
Accessible defaults you set once in templates
The strongest approach isn’t checking each campaign from scratch, it’s building accessible defaults into your templates: a logical heading order, brand colours chosen for contrast, and alt-text reminders. Every campaign that starts from that template inherits those choices.
Preview and test before you send
Preview your email in the builder as you design it, then send a test to your own inbox and open it the way subscribers will, including in dark mode, where careful brand colours can invert into unreadable combinations. A screen-reader test on that real send catches what a visual check can't.
Key features of accessible email in Klaviyo
Feature | Description | Available with Klaviyo |
|---|---|---|
Alt text on every image | The alt text field sits on each image block in the drag-and-drop editor | ✅ |
Template-level defaults | Set heading order, contrast-checked colors, and alt-text reminders once, then inherit them per campaign | ✅ |
Color and font controls | Exact hex input and font sizing make it easy to hold to accessible brand combinations | ✅ |
In-editor preview | See your email in the builder as you design, so layout and contrast issues surface while you work | ✅ |
Test sends to real inboxes | Deliver the email to your own inbox to open it in dark mode, check it with a screen reader, and click through | ✅ |
How to get started with Klaviyo
To build accessible emails in Klaviyo:
- Add alt text to every image. Describe what each image shows or conveys, and mark purely decorative images so screen readers skip them.
- Set accessible template defaults. Build heading order and contrast-checked colours into your templates so every campaign starts accessible.
- Write descriptive link text. Make each link make sense on its own, 'shop the winter collection' beats 'click here'.
- Preview in light and dark mode. Confirm contrast holds and images still work when colours invert.
- Test with a screen reader. Send a test to your own inbox and open it with a screen reader to catch what a visual preview misses. For a deeper WCAG audit, run the HTML through a dedicated accessibility tool.
Want every subscriber to be able to read, navigate, and act on your email? Get started with Klaviyo today.