Re: Unicode characters used as images

Guy
I agree 100 percent with your description. If an image was being used, that would be the solution.

For me, the issues happen when developers want to use text, which these days include emojis and a wide range of technical symbols. A mathematician would understand the distinction between multiplication and x, but could still insert the wrong symbol.

And who knows what a graphic designer might do? Most users don’t really think about the underlying meaning of a symbol, especially when it has multiple uses. You could mandate use of images in these cases, but that defeats some of the goals of Unicode of allowing text-only messages.

I would want a way to specify what some symbols might mean. Easier said than done though. Some retraining would be needed.

Best
Elizabeth

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________________________________
From: Guy Hickling <guy.hickling@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 7, 2024 11:29:41 AM
To: WAI Interest Group discussion list <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: RE: Unicode characters used as images

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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.