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Re: Another Color Contrast question

for

From: Stefan Sollinger
Date: Oct 3, 2014 2:25PM

You should really ensure sufficient contrast no matter if it's text or not,
and the fact that you may comply with WCAG because it's not text doesn't
help the visitors to your site who can't see some of the content (text or
not).

Having said that, the question if an icon font is text or not is an
interesting one. I think the answer to that question is the definition of
"text" as quoted by Andrew earlier in this thread:

Text is defined as "sequence of characters that can be programmatically
determined, where the sequence is expressing something in human language".

I always thought defining "text" is a bit silly but actually this example
shows why it is necessary.

In the example of the time/clock font Andrew quoted you clearly have a
sequence of characters (numbers) that express something in human language
(time), so this particular example is clearly text, even though it uses a
very unusual font that visually happens to look like a clock. Change the
font and you'll recognise the text.

Most icon fonts I've seen show symbols but do not consist of text according
to above definition. The character itself does not express anything in
human language and/or cannot be programmatically determined, only it's
visual shape conveys information so it's non-text content. Try changing the
font or reading it with a screen reader, often you get either nothing or
some completely different character or symbol. I've seen icon fonts that
come across as random characters or punctuation marks when rendered with
the wrong font, these clearly do not express anything in human language.

Stefan
Jon,
That's a good question. I'm not certain, but I'm leaning toward thinking
that they count as text.

For example, this page (http://timepiece.inostudio.de/) has clocks that are
made with custom symbol fonts. There is an underlying span that has
numbers associated with characters in private Unicode space. So, the parts
of the clock seem like they are a form of text... It is an uncomfortable
fit at first blush, I'll agree, but am interested in other's thoughts.

AWK