Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / Why Marketing Automation Fails Customers With Disabilities
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this story from about two years ago — a major online retailer, one you've definitely bought from — sends out an automated abandoned cart email. Standard stuff. 'Hey, you left something behind.' But inside the email, there's a GIF of a spinning shopping cart with no alt text. A customer who uses a screen reader gets the email and the screen reader just reads the file name: 'spinning cart animation dot gif.' That's it. No context. No call to action announced. Luna: Wait, so the entire purpose of the email — recovering that sale — is completely lost if you can't see the GIF? Lucas: Exactly. And the customer in this case was a regular, high-value shopper. They filed a complaint, and it escalated to a demand letter under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The retailer settled out of court — I don't think the exact number was ever public, but legal fees alone had to be in the tens of thousands. And all because a marketing automation workflow had no accessibility check built in. Luna: That's the thing — these workflows run on autopilot. You set up a trigger, an action, a template, and then you forget about it. But the template itself might be inaccessible from day one. Lucas: Right. And the scope is huge. The World Health Organization estimates that about 15 percent of the global population — over one billion people — have some form of disability. That includes visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments. And a 2023 survey by the accessibility platform AudioEye found that 71 percent of disabled customers will leave a website they find difficult to use. They don't complain — they just leave. Luna: So you're losing a huge chunk of potential revenue, not to mention the legal risk. But I feel like most marketers don't even think about accessibility when they're building a workflow. It's just not on the radar. Lucas: And I get why. Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot and Marketo give you drag and drop builders. You pick a template, you add an image, you schedule the send. The platform doesn't flag that your image has no alt text. It doesn't check color contrast on your CTA button. It doesn't warn you that your email relies on a hover interaction that doesn't work on a keyboard. Luna: So the burden falls entirely on the marketer to know about accessibility and to manually test. But most marketers aren't trained on that. Lucas: They're trained on conversion rates and open rates. And here's the irony — the same best practices that improve accessibility often improve overall engagement. Alt text helps with deliverability, because spam filters like well-structured emails. Clear headings and logical reading order help everyone scan faster. High-contrast buttons get more clicks, period. Luna: So it's not an either-or. It's a both-and. But where do you start if you're a marketing ops person listening to this and you've never thought about accessibility before? Lucas: I'd say start with the low-hanging fruit. First, every image in every email and landing page needs descriptive alt text. Not 'image' or 'photo' — actually describe what's in it. If it's a product shot, say 'blue running shoes with white sole on a wooden floor.' Second, make sure all functionality is available via keyboard. If you have a drop-down menu in a navigation bar, can you tab through it? Third, use a color contrast checker. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, require a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text. Luna: And for marketing automation specifically, I'd add: build accessibility checks into your workflow templates. If you're cloning last year's abandoned cart campaign, the template should already have alt text placeholders, semantic HTML, and a note to test with a screen reader. Lucas: That's a great point. The template itself becomes a governance tool. If every new campaign inherits an accessible structure, you're not relying on individual vigilance. You're baking it into the system. Luna: And it's not just email. Think about automated SMS campaigns — some people with visual impairments rely on screen readers, but SMS is text-only, so that's usually fine. But what about voice assistants? If you have an automated call or a voice flow, you need to make sure the prompts are clear and the options are easy to navigate. Lucas: Right. And let's talk about the elephant in the room: cost. A lot of small and mid-size companies say, 'We can't afford a full accessibility audit.' But you can buy a $20 screen reader like NVDA for Windows, which is free actually, and test your own emails in five minutes. Or use the WAVE browser extension — it's free and it highlights accessibility errors on any page. Luna: Yeah, the tools are out there. The real barrier is awareness. And honestly, if today's conversation sparked something you've actually used — maybe you added alt text to an image for the first time, or you tested an email with a screen reader — that's the kind of thing that makes this show worth doing. Lucas: Absolutely. And if today was worth a coffee to you, there's a link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's not about keeping the lights on; it's about keeping the show ad-free and independent. No pressure, just if it felt useful. Luna: Yeah, it really helps. And we mean that — the smallest thing goes a long way. Lucas: So back to the practical side. One thing I think a lot of teams miss is that accessibility isn't a one-time fix. You can't audit your emails in January and call it done. Because every new campaign, every new template, every new feature you add to your automation flow — it's a new opportunity to break accessibility. Luna: So you need ongoing testing. What does that look like in practice? Are we talking a quarterly audit? A checklist in the creative brief? Lucas: I think the best approach is to make it part of the QA step that already exists. If you have a checklist before launching a campaign — subject line approved, link tracking set, segmentation correct — add one line: 'Accessibility check passed.' And then define what that means. At a minimum: all images have alt text, no reliance on color alone to convey meaning, and the email works with a screen reader. Luna: And you can automate some of that. There are tools that scan emails before send and flag missing alt text or poor contrast. They're not perfect, but they catch the obvious stuff. Lucas: Exactly. And the legal landscape is shifting, too. In the US, the Department of Justice has made it clear that websites are places of public accommodation under the ADA. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act starts applying to e-commerce in 2025. So it's not just about doing the right thing — it's about avoiding liability. Luna: Let's bring it back to the abandoned cart example. If that retailer had simply added alt text to the GIF, they would have kept a customer and avoided legal fees. How much did that one omission cost them? Lucas: Easily tens of thousands, maybe more. And they lost the customer's lifetime value, too. That's the hidden cost — the customer who leaves quietly and never comes back. You don't see it in your analytics because they didn't bounce; they just stopped opening. Luna: So the ROI on accessibility is partly defensive — avoiding lawsuits — and partly offensive — capturing revenue you were leaving on the table. Lucas: Exactly. And I think the offensive side is underappreciated. Disabled consumers have a collective spending power of over $1 trillion annually in the US alone, according to the American Institutes for Research. If your automated marketing is inaccessible, you're invisible to that trillion-dollar market. Luna: That's a number that should make any CMO sit up. So what's one action a listener can take today, right after this episode? Lucas: Pick your top-performing automated email — the one with the highest conversion rate — and test it with a screen reader. If you're on a Mac, turn on VoiceOver. On Windows, download NVDA. Listen to how your email sounds. If it's gibberish, you know what to fix first. Luna: And then do the same for your most important landing page. That's a two-hour project that could change how you think about every campaign going forward. Lucas: Absolutely. And if you do that, let us know. We'd love to hear what you found. In the meantime, I think we've given everyone plenty to think about. Luna: Yeah, it's a big topic. But it starts with one email, one alt text, one test.