Outlook Email Broken Layout Fix: Resolve Button Clickable Area Collapse for WCAG Accessibility Violations
Accessibility failures prevent screen readers from navigating templates, isolating disabled subscribers and increasing unsubscribe rates. Below is the targeted integration guide to fix Button Clickable Area Collapse inside Outlook 2021 templates when using Campaign Monitor.
Technical Breakdown
Outlook 2021 uses the Microsoft Word (MSO) which lacks support for standard rendering rules. This causes Button Clickable Area Collapse elements to break or collapse when rendering templates.
Campaign Monitor Behaviors
Campaign Monitor wraps custom blocks in dynamic edit tags, which can break the column flow inside Outlook. Ensuring correct class names is essential. Inject correct table roles (role='presentation') and keep color pairings above the WCAG AA contrast threshold of 4.5:1.
Remediation Code Block
To maintain button structural size and clickable areas, apply paddings to the parent table cell (td tag) rather than the link element, and format the anchor tag style to display: block. In your Campaign Monitor campaign manager, make sure you configure your links to run via [unsubscribe].
<table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:collapse;">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#6366F1" style="padding: 10px 20px; border-radius: 4px;">
<a href="[unsubscribe]" style="color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none; display: block; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;">Click Here</a>
</td>
</tr>
</table>Live Code Sandbox Test
How to Deploy inside Campaign Monitor
Copy the fixed VML or table wrapper code block from the remediation box above.
In Campaign Monitor, click the 'Source' button on your selected editable text region, or edit the template code files directly. Ensure you append the 'class="cs-editable"' flag if you need inline editing later.