google / google/material-design-icons

Ligatures causing accessibility issues

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Description

Because the text inside the icons i.e. `face` is read by screen readers it will seriously confuse anyone browsing the web using a screen reader. This is get's even worse if you are using the icons in a website that is not in english. Moreover, the ligature-method could potentially confuse search engines and other third party scraping services as the content of the ``-element is plain text. And nope, the ligature identifier name will seldom be correct, a link using a lock icon to signal that it requires authentication to be accessed would be read out loud *"Log in lock outline"*, a read more link *"To the archive trending flat"*.

Yes there are workarounds, like using the much more bulky numeric character references, or by setting attributes like `aria-hidden="true"` on the ``-element (but that is not always possible), another way that could work is using a `title`-attribute and hope that the screen reader only reads that out loud and not both the title AND the ligature text but that is basically guesswork.

The point is, the default solution with ligatures, albeit elegant, does come with an whole package of accessibility issues that needs to be adressed. Either by opting for a more robust solution or by documenting the caveats of using the ligature-approach.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by examining the ligature-based web usage described in the issue, then determine whether a robust alternative or documentation is needed; done means screen readers and scraping services no longer expose misleading icon names, including in non-English contexts.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
html
Domain
accessibility
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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