RE: Your thoughts on updated "Icon Font with an On-Screen Text Alternative" Technique

Hi Laura,



I agree that description is more clear. I can help you wordsmith it later.



Thank you for your work on this.

John

John Rochford<http://profiles.umassmed.edu/profiles/display/132901>
UMass Medical School/E.K. Shriver Center
Director, INDEX Program
Instructor, Family Medicine & Community Health
www.DisabilityInfo.org
Twitter: @ClearHelper<https://twitter.com/clearhelper>

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-----Original Message-----
From: Laura Carlson [mailto:laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2016 7:30 AM
To: Low Vision Task Force <public-low-vision-a11y-tf@w3.org>
Subject: Your thoughts on updated "Icon Font with an On-Screen Text Alternative" Technique



Hello Everyone,



Thank you so very much for our discussion yesterday [1].



I updated the description for the "Icon Font with an On-Screen Text

Alternative" [1] technique trying to incorporate ideas from our

meeting. It now reads:



<quote>

The objective of this technique is to show how to provide a visible,

text alternative for an icon font that conveys information.



Icon fonts are fonts that use the Private Use Area (PUA) of Unicode.

Typically they are inserted in HTML via the CSS @font-face declaration

and generated content property. Since they are vectors they are

scalable and resolution-independent.



Icon fonts can have 2 problems:



1. Some people with disabilities may not use assistive technology (AT)

and rely on on-screen text alternatives.

2. For those who do use AT, voicing of icon fonts may be inaccurate,

nonsensical, redundant, or unpredictable.



To solve these 2 problems aria-hidden="true" is used so AT will

ignored the icon. Then an on-screen text alternative is added to

convey meaning to everyone.

<unquote>



Thoughts? Is that clearer? Suggestions for improved verbiage?



In addition, I added a definition section to the document per Andrew's

suggestion of having an icon font definition. If anyone knows of

better definitions please let me know and I can revise that section.

The ones I found are very informal.



Thank you.



Kindest Regards,

Laura



[1] https://www.w3.org/2016/07/28-lvtf-minutes.html


[2] https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Icon_Font_with_an_On-Screen_Text_Alternative


--

Laura L. Carlson