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Sometimes we need to substitute Unicode characters with images due to lack of widespread font support. Because a user manually copying the WP text should still get the correct character, the Unicode character is often added to the file syntax after a pipe. But that causes it to display as the mouse-over as well, which isn't useful (the mouse-over is either equivalent to the image, or displays as an empty box or question mark). I was thinking of adding the following text to our instructions to resolve the issue. But would this cause different problems with screen readers? Will a screen-reader recognize what a Unicode character is even if the user doesn't have the fonts to display it?

Suggested text:

The alt text is what gets copied when a reader manually copies a section of Wikipedia text that includes images. This may be useful when an image is used to substitute for a Unicode character that may not yet have widespread font support. The mouse-over, however, should be something more descriptive, as it would be unhelpful for it to look just like the image or, worse, to display as a blank box. The alt parameter provides for this distinction:

[[file:....svg|16px|(mouseover text)|alt=(copiable text)]]

For example,

Information: [[file:Infobox info icon.svg|16px|alt=🛈|The 'information' icon (circled 'i')]].

will display as:

Information: .

Note that the mouse-over display is a description of the symbol, while if you copy the text and paste it in another document, you'll faithfully reproduce the intended text "Information: 🛈." (You may need to install a supporting font for the Unicode character '🛈' to display.)

Hopefully, a screen-reader would handle the Unicode character better than we would with our verbal description. But if that won't work, would it be possible to add a 'character' param to the file syntax that would enable faithful copying of the intended WP text without interfering with screen-readers or mouse-over texts? Please ping me if you respond — kwami (talk) 00:08, 1 January 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think em sizes should be perfectly possible to support by now. Just have a bit JavaScript fix up the src-attributes if it turns out the initial guess was incorrect. 92.67.227.181 (talk) 16:31, 18 July 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Galleries. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 03:40, 29 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]