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Re: Icon-only buttons

for

From: Mark Magennis
Date: Jan 21, 2022 7:09AM

You raise a good point David - ensuring the icon is recognizable. If you have a printer icon button with the name "print", a voice activation user can say "click print". But they will need to guess that its name is "print". I would say it's guessable that a print icon's name is "print" so it is okay to have that as an icon-only button with no visible text. But how many icons are there with names that are guessable, or guessable at two or three attempts? Do you think the following are guessable?

X icon - Close
Pencil icon - Edit
Printer icon - Print
Trash can icon - Delete or Remove
Square with arrow pointing out of the top right corner - Opens in a new tab
Loudspeaker - Volume or Mute
Lower case i in a circle - Information
Question mark - Help

I would say most of these are guessable, but are there that many more? Specific domains may have their own sets of standard icons that are guessable I suppose.

Mark