"If I could live through accessibility audits and not have someone say, 'but we have alt text,' I would feel like I just entered a new realm of the world." — Sarah

Email accessibility (a11y) is broken, and the industry largely knows it.

77% of brands say accessibility is a priority. Only 8% follow best practices. Only 0.1% of HTML emails actually meet the standard. That's not a resource problem; it's a myth problem, a status quo problem, and in some cases, a willful ignorance problem.

The industry talks endlessly about inclusion while locking out 1.3 billion disabled people worldwide, who collectively control over $1 trillion in annual disposable income.

Sarah Gallardo has spent over 12 years building email campaigns for Fortune 500 companies, earning her CPACC and Trusted Tester certifications along the way. She now audits enterprise email programs for accessibility, and in this episode, she brings the receipts on an industry that talks inclusion and consistently fails to deliver.

Timestamps

00:42 — The 77% vs. 8% Chasm: The industry says accessibility matters. The data says otherwise, and the gap isn't malicious; it's a myth. Either way, disabled users pay for it.

07:15 — The $121 Billion Case: Inaccessible digital experiences cost an estimated $121 billion on Black Friday 2021 alone. The ROI argument isn't theoretical; it's already been paid for.

16:45 — Why the Big Platforms Are Still Behind: Legacy code, slow feedback loops, and architecture built before accessibility was a priority. Sarah explains why the tools millions of marketers use every day haven't caught up.

20:55 — AI Can't Audit This, Yet Don’t Chase 100%: 60–80% of WCAG criteria can't be evaluated by any automated checker. A perfect score from a tool isn't a finish line; it's barely a starting point.

26:44 — How Misinformation Survives at Scale: At large companies, bad accessibility advice spreads quietly through dev teams. Only certifications, reputation, and leadership backing earn advocates enough authority to push back.

31:00 — The Alt Text Myth That Won't Die: Alt text isn't the finish line marketers think it is. 25% of disabled users aren't using screen readers at all, including people with dyslexia, relying on tools that block images outright.

38:55 — The Moment Stakeholders Stop Arguing: Nothing converts a skeptic faster than hearing a screen reader try to read a broken email out loud. Sarah's go-to move in the room.

43:30 — Audits for Lawyers vs. Audits for People: Some companies run accessibility audits to build a legal paper trail, not to fix anything. Sarah's real job is turning that defensive instinct into actual change.

49:30 — The Misinformation Loop Nobody Talks About: Bad accessibility advice gets copy-pasted across the industry until it's baked into real codebases, quietly undermining the very users it claims to help.

Sponsor

Brought to you by Hightouch, the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at hightouch.com/msom.

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