Email accessibility shows little improvement in 2026

Email remains one of the most widely used forms of digital communication, from marketing campaigns and newsletters to important service updates and customer communications. But for people with disability, many of these emails continue to present unnecessary barriers.

The Email Markup Consortium’s 2026 Email Accessibility Report paints a concerning picture of the current state of email accessibility. Of the 376,348 HTML emails analysed, 99.88% contained at least one accessibility issue categorised as Serious or Critical. Just eight emails, representing 0.002% of those analysed, passed all of the report’s accessibility checks.

While there have been incremental improvements in some areas, the overall rate of Serious and Critical issues remains largely unchanged from the previous year. Perhaps most concerning is that many of the problems identified are not particularly complex accessibility issues. They are fundamental practices that should already form part of creating accessible digital content.

Common accessibility issues remain widespread

Among the most frequently identified issues were missing language and text direction information, inaccessible layout tables, links without discernible text, insufficient colour contrast and missing alternative text for images.

For example, 95.66% of emails did not include the required language information within the body content. This is particularly important in email because some email clients can remove language information set elsewhere in the HTML, potentially affecting how assistive technologies interpret and announce content.

The report also found that 83.78% of emails used tables for layout without correctly identifying them as presentational. Tables are still commonly used to create email layouts, but if they are not correctly identified as layout tables, screen readers may announce unnecessary table information and make the content more difficult to navigate.

Other common issues included:

• 71.23% of emails contained links without discernible text, which can include linked images without appropriate alternative text
• 58.48% contained text with insufficient colour contrast
• 47.88% contained images without alternative text
• 15.83% included non-descriptive link text.

There are some positive signs. The proportion of emails with images missing alternative text has fallen from 55.26% in 2023 to 47.88% in 2026. Similarly, the proportion of layout tables missing an appropriate role has decreased from 89.16% to 83.78%.

However, these incremental improvements have not yet translated into a meaningful reduction in the overall number of emails containing Serious or Critical accessibility issues.

Email-building platforms have an important role to play

For the first time, the report separately examined emails created through three widely used marketing and newsletter platforms: Substack, Shopify and Beehiiv.

Across 10,566 emails assessed from these platforms, none passed the testing undertaken.

The results cannot necessarily be attributed entirely to the platforms themselves, as some accessibility issues can result from choices made by individual authors. However, the findings highlight the important role email-building platforms can play in preventing accessibility problems.

Accessible templates and defaults can make a significant difference. Platforms can also guide authors towards better decisions by making accessibility settings easy to find and use, identifying potential issues during the authoring process and avoiding templates or components that introduce accessibility barriers by default.

Ultimately, people creating emails should not need to be accessibility or HTML experts to produce accessible content. The tools they use should help them get it right.

Email clients are also part of the challenge

The report also examined how 43 email clients support 37 HTML and CSS features that can help developers create more accessible emails. None of the email clients tested supported all 37 features.

Apple Mail on macOS performed strongest, supporting 34 of the 37 features tested, followed by Apple Mail on iOS and Samsung Email on Android with 31. Proton Mail desktop and iOS supported 29.

At the other end of the scale, 25 of the 43 email clients supported fewer than half of the accessibility-related features assessed.

This inconsistent support can limit what email developers are able to achieve. Features that support semantics, focus visibility, user preferences and assistive technology compatibility may be stripped, altered or unsupported when an email is rendered by a particular client.

The result is an ecosystem where accessibility depends not only on how an email is created, but also on the platform used to build it and the application ultimately used to read it.

What can organisations do?

While some parts of the email ecosystem sit outside an organisation’s control, there are still practical steps marketing and communications teams can take to improve the accessibility of the emails they send.

Start by building accessibility into your email templates and design systems rather than addressing the same problems campaign by campaign. Establish accessible colour combinations, typography, heading structures and components that can be reused across communications.

Content authors should also follow many of the same accessibility principles that apply elsewhere in digital communications. This includes providing appropriate alternative text for meaningful images, using descriptive link text, maintaining sufficient colour contrast, using headings to structure longer content and avoiding communicating information through images of text.

Organisations using email marketing platforms should also understand what their platform does and does not support. Review the accessibility of your existing templates, identify limitations in the authoring tool and provide guidance or training to the people responsible for creating and sending communications.

For more complex HTML emails, accessibility should also be considered alongside the existing quality assurance process used to check how an email appears and behaves across different email clients and devices.

Accessibility needs to become part of the email workflow

The 2026 report reinforces that improving email accessibility requires shared responsibility across the entire ecosystem. Senders need to create accessible content, email-building platforms need to make accessible choices easier, and email clients need to provide better support for the technologies used to deliver accessible messages.

For organisations, however, the immediate opportunity is much closer to home. Accessibility can be incorporated into templates, brand guidelines, content processes and the everyday workflows of marketing and communications teams.

Email accessibility should not be something considered only when a problem is identified. Building it into the way emails are designed and created from the outset can help organisations produce communications that reach more people, more effectively.