accessibility & icon use

I'm looking at making accessible an educational website for an FE college 
and while looking at inclusiveness of people with learning difficulties, 
Something struck me. I think, maybe a potential standardisation missing 
which may help many people.

What I'm interested in is the use of icons on web pages as the main meaning 
representation for links (see  Jonathan Chetwynd's web site at 
http://www.peepo.com for example).

Is there any development of a global standard for meanings of icons / 
pictograms so that meanings become standard like text?

I ask this because the constant replies I get, is to work with students to 
invent our own - this is reasonable for our Intranet where support is 
easily given but potential future students (our web sites target audience) 
may not perceive them with the same meaning, which could cause confusion.

These could be developed in the same way different people require (and can 
choose) use of different fonts (for languages / families locales). They 
could also be defined WAI?

I'd be interested to hear comments on this.

Dave Harris

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Received on Wednesday, 5 May 2004 06:55:36 UTC