Email accessibility has never been optional. For teams in regulated industries, the legal and compliance pressure around it is growing fast.
To help our customers ensure compliance with new accessibility regulations, Stensul is excited to introduce Accessibility QA Check, a Governance Agent that runs inside the builder and checks emails against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 standards in real time as they’re being created. Checks including color contrast and alt text get flagged on the canvas before the email ships — automatically, every time, regardless of who built it or when.
Accessibility QA Check is the latest addition to our governance suite — a Governance Agent built to bring the final compliance check inside the creation process, where it belongs. And we picked today to launch it on purpose. It’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
What we built
Operating as a real-time, in-builder assistant, the Accessibility QA Check evaluates emails against WCAG 2.1 AA standards while they are being built. Unlike traditional manual audits that happen at the end of a workflow, this Agent surfaces issues — such as color contrast failures, missing alt-text, and broken heading structures — directly on the canvas and in a dedicated side panel, prompting the user to fix the issues. By providing immediate feedback, it ensures that inclusive design is a default setting rather than a final hurdle, allowing teams in regulated industries to ship accessible content at scale without sacrificing speed.
Why this matters now
Email accessibility has been a legal requirement for years, but the stakes have increased recently.
The European Accessibility Act came into force in June 2025, extending digital accessibility requirements to private companies across the EU. ADA litigation targeting digital properties has been climbing in the US for years. Healthcare teams are navigating Section 1557 of the ACA. Financial services firms face growing legal and regulatory pressure around accessible customer and investor communications.
About 1.3 billion people globally live with some form of disability. An inaccessible send doesn’t just shut out a significant portion of your audience from content, it also creates legal exposure.
Moving the accessibility check to be a real-time assistant changes the workflow so accessibility flags issues the whole time a user is building, rather than being reserved for the end where critical requirements could be missed.
Built on governed ground
Stensul already handles governance upstream: templates, locked modules, required fields, and approval logic configured before anyone starts building. Most compliance decisions happen before a creator opens a canvas.
The Governance Agent sits at the next layer. The template already handles most of it, but the agent catches what’s left, verifying that a governed system is held across every send.
The final review step before a campaign ships is still manual at most companies, dependent on a final person to catch every error.
Governance Agents are how that step becomes a governed process, prompting users throughout creation of errors that could get missed if they’re left at the end.
The Accessibility QA Check is available for all customers in the Stensul platform.
