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Re: emojis and screen readers

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From: Beranek, Nicholas
Date: Jun 2, 2017 9:54AM

Hi Lisa,

In my experience, they are handled well on a few sites, and abysmally on others. iOS emojis in texts, etc, are done pretty well and have alt text for each. Take the following example from Twitter:

<img class="Emoji Emoji--forText" src="https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/72x72/1f602.png" draggable="false" alt="😂" title="Face with tears of joy" aria-label="Emoji: Face with tears of joy">

What I found most interesting was they repeated the emoji itself within the alt attribute, but they provided an aria-label that overrides it in VoiceOver. Therefore, it reads 'Emoji: Face with tears of joy, image-.

Facebook, however, is not doing anything for them, including the reaction emojis. Take their example:

<span class="_47e3 _5mfr"><img aria-hidden="true" height="16" src="https://www.facebook.com/images/emoji.php/v9/fe9/2/16/1f640.png" width="16" alt="" class="img"><span class="_7oe">ðŸ™</span></span>

Their alternative, the <span> with the emoji, is relying on itself to convey meaning instead of providing the text alternative. That isn't supported with at least macOS VoiceOver.

Hope this helps,

Nick

--
Nick Beranek
Digital Accessibility Team
Capital One

On 6/2/17, 11:45 AM, "WebAIM-Forum on behalf of L Snider" < <EMAIL REMOVED> on behalf of <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I have been doing some reading on emojis and found that some people say
they could usually read them with screen readers.

Today, people use emojis a lot on Twitter, Facebook and in emails. Do they
come with alts already with them? or are they problematic?

Cheers

Lisa



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