RE: Unicode characters used as images

Aren't we all getting a bit hung up about images and glyphs and unicode
characters here? And paying a little too much attention to the words of the
WCAG rather than the user's needs? Suppose we look at it from the user's
point of view - and particularly from the point of view of screen reader
users.

They are presented with a shopping list, with some items already selected
and others not. All screen reader wants to hear is something like
"Selected" and "Not selected", or "Chosen" and "Not chosen", or something
like that (depending on what the scenario is on a particular website but
it's a shopping list here). So that is what I think we should announce
against each item. Why would they expect to hear of images? Or of "X"s or
multiplication or anything else like that? - an image has no relevance here
even though we sighted people know the designer has used an image purely to
make things look interesting visually. And multiplication has nothing to do
with anything at all here.

So, I think the image should be hidden from screen readers, and some
screen-reader-only text saying something like "Selected" and "Not selected"
(- we can discuss exactly what would be best, for the users, to announce).

By the way, I encountered a similar website yesterday, a booking form where
you choose a date and time from a list of time slots. When a slot was full
up so nobody else can book, it shows, visually, an icon of a red traffic no
entry sign - a red circle with a diagonal red line through it. Same sort of
thing. But the sign is used in this case to mean "fully booked", because it
is a booking form, not "no entry" as the sign is usually used to mean.