Accessibility and Compliance

Use of email communications tools is governed by a range of federal and state laws and guidance, as well as California State University system and San José State University institutional regulations covering student privacy, data security and communication standards.

University Marketing and Communications (UMC) retains responsibility for ensuring all users of the Emma platform conform to the following laws, regulations and guidelines. As such, SJSU Brand Standards for Emma and best practices are written and published to ensure full compliance with all following rules:

Federal Laws and Requirements

California State Law and Guidance

SJSU Rules and Resources

  • SJSU Digital Content Remediation Hub – guidance on any kind of digital material concerning any of the following focus areas:
    • Instructional materials: access to instructional documents and media on the internet, e.g., textbooks, reading material, videos, recordings, etc.
    • Procurement: digital and information technology purchases, e.g., software, classroom technology
    • Website: any SJSU digital tools, e.g., sjsu.edu website content and pages

Applicability to Emma

Generally, with regard to the use of Emma at SJSU, these regulations dictate and inform usage standards at SJSU that takes the form of (but not limited to):

  • Requirements for opting-out or unsubscribing options in every email campaign, no deceptive “from” fields or subject lines, physical addresses in footers
  • No posting of PDFs, QR codes, or flyers in the bodies of emails and no QR codes in graphics placed in emails.
  • All links and hyperlinked text must be readable by screenreaders and clickable by all end-users
  • Graphics with minimal to no text overlaid and alternative text for all graphics and photography used in email campaigns
  • Captions for any photography and caption options for embedded video

Emma content standards

Accessibility Support Tools

Use of the following tools is not a guarantee of full accessibility compliance, but can help identify obvious issues. For a full accessibility review, submit a request to the UMC Web and User Experience team.