Email Accessibility in Klaviyo

About 15% of the world's population has some form of disability. In the US alone, roughly 26% of adults have a disability that affects how they interact with digital content. That includes people with visual impairments, motor disabilities, cognitive disabilities, and hearing loss.

If your emails aren't accessible, you're not just failing a moral obligation. You're cutting yourself off from 15-26% of potential customers. People who have money, want to buy things, and literally cannot engage with your emails because you didn't add alt text to your images or because your button text says "Click Here."

The fixes are simple. Most take less than 5 minutes. Let me show you what to do in Klaviyo.

Why Email Accessibility Matters for Revenue

Beyond the obvious ethical reasons, accessibility directly impacts your email performance:

Deliverability. Emails with proper alt text, semantic HTML, and good text-to-image ratios are less likely to be flagged by spam filters. Email providers evaluate content quality, and accessible emails score higher.

Engagement. People who can actually read and interact with your email are more likely to click and buy. When your CTA button says "Shop Our New Collection" instead of "Click Here," more people (including those using screen readers) understand what they're clicking on.

Legal compliance. ADA lawsuits targeting digital accessibility have grown every year. While email-specific lawsuits are less common than website lawsuits, they're not zero. Proactive accessibility reduces legal risk.

Brand perception. Inclusive brands earn loyalty from customers who notice (and they notice). Accessibility is a signal that you care about all of your customers, not just the ones who have perfect vision and dexterity.

The Quick Fixes (Do These Today)

1. Alt Text on Every Image

When a screen reader encounters an image without alt text, it either skips the image entirely (the user misses the content) or reads the file name ("IMG_4857_final_v2.jpg" — helpful for nobody).

In Klaviyo's email editor, click on any image block. In the settings panel, you'll find an "Alt text" field. Fill it in for every single image.

How to write good alt text:

For product images: "Red leather handbag with gold clasp, front view" (describe what the customer would see)

For decorative images: Set alt text to empty (alt="") so screen readers skip them. In Klaviyo, you can leave the alt text field blank for purely decorative elements like dividers and background patterns.

For images that contain text: Repeat the text in the alt text. If your hero banner has "Summer Sale - 30% Off Everything" burned into the image, the alt text should be "Summer Sale - 30% Off Everything."

For CTA images (images that are links): Describe the action. "Shop the summer collection" not "Banner image."

2. Don't Use Images as Your Entire Email

Some emails are one big image. The designer creates the email in Photoshop, exports it as a single image, and drops it into Klaviyo. This is terrible for accessibility because screen readers can't parse text inside images.

It's also terrible for deliverability (spam filters can't read image-only emails) and for customers who have images disabled by default (they see a blank email).

The rule: Every piece of important information should exist as live HTML text, not as text embedded in an image. Product names, prices, descriptions, and CTAs should all be real text.

Images supplement the text. They don't replace it.

3. Descriptive Link and Button Text

Screen reader users often navigate emails by tabbing through links and buttons. If all your links say "Click Here" or "Learn More," they hear: "Click Here. Click Here. Click Here." They have no idea where any of those links go.

Bad: "Click here to shop" Good: "Shop the Summer Collection"

Bad: "Learn more" Good: "Read the Complete Guide to Skincare Routines"

Bad: "See details" Good: "View Sale Details and Discounts"

In Klaviyo, set button text to describe the destination or action. Every button and link should make sense when read out of context.

4. Color Contrast

Your beautiful light gray text on a white background? Unreadable for people with low vision, color blindness, or even people reading email on their phone in sunlight.

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.

Use a contrast checker tool (WebAIM Contrast Checker is free and online) to verify your color combinations:

• Brand rose (#DD4E75) on white: Check the ratio
• Light gray text on white: Almost certainly fails
• White text on dark backgrounds: Usually passes

Common failures:

• Light gray text on white or light backgrounds
• Pastel colors on white
• Brand colors that look great but don't have enough contrast

Fix: darken your text colors slightly or increase the background contrast. A subtle change from light gray (#999999) to medium gray (#666666) can make the difference between passing and failing accessibility standards.

5. Font Size

Minimum 14px for body text. 16px is better. Anything below 12px is essentially invisible to people with moderate vision impairment.

In Klaviyo's email editor, set your default body font size to 16px and your minimum to 14px. Headings should be 20px+.

Don't rely on users zooming in. Many email clients (especially webmail like Gmail viewed in a browser) don't support text zooming the way websites do.

6. Logical Reading Order

Screen readers read content in the order it appears in the HTML, not in the visual order on screen. In Klaviyo's drag-and-drop editor, the top-to-bottom order of your content blocks is the reading order.

Make sure this order makes sense narratively:

1. Preheader text
2. Hero/headline
3. Main content/offer
4. Supporting details
5. CTA
6. Footer

If you use multi-column layouts, understand that screen readers typically read left column first (top to bottom), then right column (top to bottom). Make sure this order makes sense.

7. Semantic Structure

Use proper heading hierarchy. If your email has a main headline, subheadings, and body copy, use H1 for the main headline, H2 for subheadings, and paragraph tags for body text.

In Klaviyo, you can set text blocks to different heading levels using the formatting toolbar. Don't just make text bigger and bold — use actual heading tags.

This matters because screen reader users often navigate by headings. They can jump from heading to heading to find the section they're interested in.

Testing Accessibility

Preview in Plain Text

Klaviyo generates a plain text version of every email. Preview it to see what your email looks like without any formatting. If the plain text version is incoherent (random characters, missing context, no structure), screen reader users are having a bad experience.

Use a Screen Reader

The best test is to experience your email the way someone with a visual impairment does. Enable VoiceOver on Mac (Command + F5) or Narrator on Windows (Windows key + Ctrl + Enter). Navigate your email using only the keyboard. Can you understand the content? Can you find and activate the CTA? Does the reading order make sense?

Email Accessibility Checkers

Tools like Litmus and Email on Acid include accessibility checking features that flag common issues: missing alt text, low contrast, small font sizes, and missing language attributes.

The 5-Person Test

Send your email to 5 people and ask them to accomplish a specific task: "Find the main product and click the button to buy it." If anyone struggles, there's an accessibility issue worth fixing — even if it's not a traditional accessibility failure, it's a usability problem that affects everyone.

Klaviyo-Specific Considerations

Template blocks. When using Klaviyo's pre-built template blocks (product blocks, recommendation blocks), check the alt text. Dynamic product blocks pull product images from your catalog, and the alt text may default to the product title. Verify this is descriptive enough.

Dynamic content. If you use conditional content blocks, make sure the email makes sense regardless of which blocks are shown. A screen reader user in a segment that hides certain blocks should still get a coherent email.

Footer compliance. Klaviyo's footer includes the unsubscribe link, which is essential for accessibility (and legal compliance). Don't hide or minimize the footer. The unsubscribe link should be clearly labeled and easy to find.

Preview text. The preview text (preheader) is read by screen readers as the first text in the email. Make it meaningful. Don't leave it as the default "Having trouble viewing this email? View in browser."

The Bottom Line

Email accessibility isn't a separate project. It's a set of habits that take 5 extra minutes per email and make your content available to millions of additional potential customers.

Add alt text to every image. Use descriptive link text. Check your color contrast. Use real text instead of images for important content. Test with a screen reader once.

These basics will put you ahead of 90% of eCommerce email programs, because the truth is, most brands don't even try.

If you want help building Klaviyo email templates that are both beautiful and accessible, book a call with us. We'll audit your current templates and fix the gaps.