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It seems to be a trend for the moment to embed custom web dingbat fonts and use them as icons on web pages. But isn't it so that a screen reader will read those characters out load? So when it for example reads out a menu for a visually impaered visitor it could sound something like this (in this example the letter f would be a dingbat for an fancy arrow) f home, f about us, f contact.

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Awesome question. :) – Patrick McElhaney Dec 9 '11 at 1:34

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Great question!!

I had a strong suspicion myself, so I just asked one of my colleagues (who is a JAWS user) to test it for me.

You're right: it does appear to read the keyboard-equivalent. Testing with the Wingding "snowflake" (which is 5 across, 3 down in this image), JAWS reads T. This would have the effect of reading letters in the place of the wingding.

I would suggest that the accessible way to provide this content would be to use images and provide appropriate ALT text equivalents (where necessary) and s for form elements.

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Great answer! :) – Tony Bolero Dec 9 '11 at 8:23
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either that, or use the unicode dingbats, which are not simple a-z letters with a fancy web glyph but are instead completely different codepoints. – Erics Dec 9 '11 at 10:14
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Do note that JAWS is the IE of screen readers. It's widely used, so a reality, but also woefully out of date most of the time as well. As for now, perhaps a title attribute can help? <span title="Snowflake">[unicode character]</span> – DA01 Dec 9 '11 at 15:54
This is precisely the problem: they're not using unicode characters. I do agree that this is the better solution! – msanford Dec 21 '11 at 23:05

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