Emojis and emoticons

Take care with emojis 🙂.

Emojis can easily be misinterpreted by people. Emojipedia.org (opens in a new tab) describes this emoji as “A yellow face with simple, open eyes and a thin, closed smile. Conveys a wide range of positive, happy, and friendly sentiments. Its tone can also be patronizing, passive-aggressive, or ironic, as if saying “This is fine when it’s really not.”

Blaming Screen Readers 🚩×5 (opens in a new tab)

Avoid emoticons

Emoticons are created from text :-(

They can sometimes be read by assistive technology, but not always. Listening to a stream of punctuation does not really give any idea what the meaning is.   For example, the “shrug” emoticon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Avoid multiple emojis

👏Well👏done👏everyone👏

Assistive technology will say “Clapping hands Well clapping hands done clapping hands everyone clapping hands”

Reading for emojis and emoticons

📙 Emojipedia — 😃 Home of Emoji Meanings 💁👌🎍😍 (opens in a new tab) - find out how assistive technology will say the emoji