Overview

This lesson explains the differences in email clients and how they affect your ability to compose accessible email messages.

Core Concepts

What are email clients?

An email client is a program that can send and receive email. Clients can be on your desktop, like Outlook 2013, or on the web, like Gmail or Outlook for Office 365. You may be able to access the same email from both a web-based client and a desktop client. The important thing to know is that not all email clients have the same accessibility or formatting tools available.

Most institutions and agencies use Microsoft's Outlook for email. As such, this module will focus more on the features available in Outlook. Find out what version of Outlook you are using.

For those using Gmail, there will be less focus on accessible Gmail messages as there are fewer tools and resources.

Differences in Mail Clients

In general, desktop clients have a wider range of accessibility features available than web clients. Newer versions have more features available than older versions and greater support resources.

Some institutions may be on a particular version of Outlook but may delay rolling out updates. This may lead to inconsistencies in the features available and the actual experience for some users. If you have questions about which features are available and how to find them, please contact the Microsoft Enterprise Disability Answer Desk.

When it comes to accessibility in Outlook, the Accessibility Checker may be available, but authoring tools are limited unless you're on newer versions (365, 2019).

Click Next to advance to the next lesson or return to the Module Overview.