Email Checklist for WCAG Level AA Compliance

Beefree App is now RGE Studio!
The email design suite you already know and love just leveled up. We’re working hard to update our help center, but you still may see some references to the old product name.

What is the April 24, 2026 deadline and who does it apply to? 

The U.S. Department of Justice finalized a rule requiring public universities and state/local government entities to make their web content and mobile apps compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards. The compliance deadline depends on the size of the government entity:

• State and local governments serving 50,000 or more persons must comply by April 24, 2026
• Those serving fewer than 50,000 persons, as well as special district governments, have until April 26, 2027

Does the regulation apply to email specifically? 

The regulation broadly covers digital content. It does not call out email as a specific medium. However, email falls under the umbrella of digital communications that a public institution produces and distributes, so the spirit of the law likely applies. That said, WCAG guidelines were originally written for web pages, and the standards are not always a perfect fit for email's technical realities.

Does the compliance requirement cover the tool people use, or the content they produce? 

Both, but in different ways. Output compliance means the digital content your institution publishes (emails, web pages, PDFs) must meet WCAG AA standards so that end users with disabilities can access it. Authoring tool accessibility means that under Section 508, if a university employee with a disability needs to use a tool like RGE Studio (formerly known as Beefree) to do their job, that tool must also be accessible. When questions come up, it’s worth clarifying which layer they're asking about!

What is a VPAT? 

A VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) is a standardized document and is often called an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) when filled out. It details how a product meets technical accessibility standards, specifically WCAG 2.x, Section 508, and EN 301 549. IT and procurement teams frequently require a VPAT before approving a tool for use. It's their way of evaluating accessibility posture before purchase or renewal.

Note: Asking whether any tool is "WCAG compliant" in general doesn't have a simple yes/no answer. WCAG is made up of many individual success criteria, each of which can be supported, partially supported, not supported, or not applicable. A VPAT exists to provide a structured and transparent declaration of the current level of support.

Does RGE Studio (formerly known as Beefree) have a VPAT? 

Yes. RGE Studio has published a VPAT (Accessibility Conformance Report) for the Beefree SDK, which is the core builder engine that powers the drag-and-drop email editing experience. It was published in November 2025 and covers WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2. You can find our VPAT by navigating to our Trust Center (make sure “Beefree SDK is selected from the dropdown). Here’s a direct link. 

What does the Beefree SDK VPAT cover? 

The VPAT covers the authoring tool experience. Specifically, the core drag-and-drop builder: the editing interface, content blocks, rows, and the visual design experience your team interacts with when creating and editing emails. It evaluates two things: authoring tool accessibility (can someone with a disability use the builder itself?) and output accessibility (does the content produced by the builder meet accessibility standards?). The VPAT covers both, but the primary scope is the authoring tool experience.

What are the known gaps in the Beefree SDK's accessibility? 

The VPAT is transparent about areas that are partially supported or not yet supported, including:

• Keyboard navigation: Several interactive elements are not fully keyboard-accessible
• Focus management: Focus order is inconsistent in some modals and after certain interactions
• Screen reader support: Some buttons and elements lack meaningful labels (announced as generic "Button")
• Animation controls: It is not possible to pause or stop looped animations in the builder
• Text resize: At 200% zoom, the tools sidebar may overflow on smaller screens

The VPAT represents the state of the product as of November 2025. Beefree continuously works to improve accessibility.

Does the VPAT cover the full RGE Studio product or just the builder? 

The published VPAT covers the Beefree SDK, which is the core builder component of the web-based RGE Studio product. Think of it as "the engine under the hood." RGE Studio takes the core SDK functionality and adds additional features around it: review and approvals, Smart Check, brand management, collaboration tools, and more. Those surrounding features are not covered by the current VPAT. 

For the primary use case of designing and editing emails, the VPAT should give your IT and accessibility team a solid foundation to work from.

Are emails created in RGE Studio WCAG compliant? 

RGE Studio gives users the tools to make accessible choices, including adding meaningful alt text to images, setting language attributes, controlling text contrast and size, and building structured, readable layouts. Whether the final output is WCAG compliant depends on how the email is built by the user. The Smart Check feature in RGE Studio also flags common accessibility issues before sending. The sender is ultimately responsible for the accessibility of the content they publish.

What does WCAG compliance require for email content? 

While WCAG was written for web pages, common best practices for accessible email include: 

• meaningful alt text on every image
• sufficient color contrast (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text)
• semantic HTML structure
• readable text sizes (generally 14px+ for body text)
• correct language tags
• responsive layout that works at different screen sizes

RGE Studio's HTML output is designed to support most of these scenarios.

What is VML and why does it affect accessibility? 

VML (Vector Markup Language) is a Microsoft-specific format that RGE Studio automatically includes in its HTML output as a fallback for legacy versions of Outlook desktop, which don't fully support modern HTML and CSS. It's used to handle things like background images and other design elements that wouldn't otherwise render correctly in those clients.

VML is essentially a parallel version of your content that assistive technologies like screen readers may encounter. Unlike standard HTML, VML wasn't designed with accessibility in mind. Depending on how it's used, screen readers may skip over it, misread it, or be unable to interact with links and content inside it. For a technical deep dive, Mark Robbins' article Is VML Accessible? is an excellent reference.

RGE Studio currently includes VML by default. Whether this matters for your emails depends almost entirely on your audience: if your subscribers aren't using legacy Outlook versions, the fallback never renders and has no practical impact on your emails. If you're sending primarily to consumers, Gmail users, or modern email clients, VML is largely irrelevant to you.

If removing VML from your HTML output is important to your team, please let us know, and we’ll add your vote to make this a toggle you can disable when exporting your HTML. 

Why does my ESP flag accessibility errors that RGE Studio's Smart Check doesn't catch?

Different tools check for different things, so some discrepancy between RGE Studio's Smart Check and your ESP's accessibility checker is normal and doesn't necessarily mean either tool is wrong.

One common source of mismatch involves VML elements. Because RGE Studio automatically includes VML in its HTML output, some ESPs may flag those elements for accessibility issues, such as missing alt text.

If you're consistently seeing errors in your ESP that you can't trace back to your content choices, it's worth reaching out to RGE Studio support to help diagnose where they're coming from.