I’ve been wondering about one thing lately: about using emojis on my website.
Honestly, I always preferred text emoticons like “:D” or “:3”, simply because it is what I am used to. It’s what I remember from my childhood – I grew up on internet forums and the Telegram furry subculture, so it’s ingrained in me.
I don’t have any emoticons on my website right now – mostly because it feels strange to me¹. I recently put a wink emoji on my website, though.
I can see several arguments in favour of and against emojis.
Pro:
Emoji are properly read out by screen-readers, especially compared to regular emoticons. Whereas “:D” will usually be read as “uppercase D” or “colon D”, “” is announced as “Grinning face with smiling eyes”.
Emoji are often a preferable alternative to image icons due to being easier to handle since they’re text, and are more likely to be handled well by screen-readers.
Emoji are part of the Unicode standard and therefore wildly supported and standardised.
Emoji have a better semantic component than text emoticons because they have a ‘canon’ meaning. They might even be somewhat machine-readable that way.
Contra:
Emoji are a relatively modern invention, popularised through social media, and to some people therefore might represent the very part of the web they want to escape.
Emoji are not easily or uniformly styled, might clash with the site’s design or render in unexpected ways on some browsers or devices.
Emoji might be difficult for the web gardener to type on a desktop device.
This is all assuming that people don’t spam or misuse emoji, though.
What are your thoughts on it?
¹ (footnote 1)
For some reason, even though in my head I’m a pretty silly person, my writing style is very – uh – stilted and awkward, somehow? As you noticed, probably. An emoticon wouldn’t fit that well. Trust, me, I tried!
I think emojis on the web (and to a larger extent, unicode in generall) are a net positive because it means you no longer have to rely on symbol fonts (wingdings lol) or images to put symbols in your text.
On the contrary, I’ve heard from a blind person that screen readers can pick up simple smilies like :) but I’m not sure how many of them. Emojis on the other hand are more explicit and look better, but too many of them can be annoying. As always, balance is key.
For what it’s worth, I use emojis in a few places on pages that would look too bland otherwise, but not inline. More like markers of important menu items or bullet points in a list.
Worth noting that HTML5 supports all kinds of interesting entities like dingbats or little stars.
That entirely depends on the screen reader, though.
There are many screen readers and other accessibility software, if not most, that do not recognise text-based emoticons. And even if they do, some modern ones like ‘^^"’, ‘.w.’ or even ‘UwU’ won’t get picked up.
To make matters worse, the vast majority of people who use screen readers use the software’s default configuration.
“Screen readers read most ASCII art literally, which can be extremely confusing. For example, ‘:-)’ reads as ‘colon dash right parenthesis’ and ‘->’ as ‘dash greater than.’”
– IDHS: IITAA 1.0 Implementation Guidelines for Web (pre-2018) (See headline 2.4)
I feel like I would use them more if I blogged from my phone. I don’t have an easy way of adding emojis from my computer unless I specifically look them up and copy/paste.
On Windows 10 you can use the shortcut [windows key] + . to bring up an emoji selector! It’s handy, but dunno if it’s available on W11 or if there’s something similar for other OSes.
interesting question…! i use plenty of emojis when i’m talking to people, but i don’t really use them on my website… i have them in my bl recs page because it started as blog posts on cohost, and i think that’s the only place! it hadn’t really occurred to me before i guess.
i don’t tend to think of my website as something conversational, i guess!
For talking to people and making facial expressions, I prefer old school text-based emoticons.
A personal website is a different story. I don’t tend to use emoji much in that context either, but it’s handy to have them as a low-effort alternative to custom icons for things like The Haunted Woods.
Ever since I learned about the windows key + . I’ve used emojis here and there in comments and blogging because I know they’re much more screen-reader compatible. I only really use them on websites if thematic or for flare or something.
That being said I love me some Kaomoji, but those are absolutely TERRIBLE for screen readers. So I just use them in conversation with people I know are sighted anyway, I don’t use them in websites or blogging.
That’s exactly why I avoid them too, even though I love them!
I wish there was a way on social media to mark up alt-text for… well, text. So I could use kaomoji, ASCII art or a keysmash, but screen reader users hear something like “keysmash”.
Actually, in case people in here weren’t aware, this is possible in HTML!
You use the “aria-label” attribute on a ‘span’ element as such:
Yeah, I’ve seen people use this markup! The key is to give it the image role, too, so that the aria label is recognized. (I know you have one in the example, just wanted to highlight it for other folks~)
Oooh thank you for this. I knew there HAD to be a way to give it an alt text but I had no idea how to go about it or what to even look up to start with, so much appreciated!
” is announced as “Grinning face with smiling eyes”.
i use plenty of emojis when i’m talking to people, but i don’t really use them on my website… i have them in my bl recs page because it started as blog posts on cohost, and i think that’s the only place! it hadn’t really occurred to me before i guess.