I see more and more people faking bold and italic text on LinkedIn using Unicode characters.
Here is an example that you may or may not see depending on your client for viewing this:
Example of bold text: ππ¨π₯π
Example of italicised text: ππ‘πππππ
Here are three things you may want to know if you are considering doing this. The same issues apply wherever you may be using them and on all web platforms.
1) Unicode characters may display differently on different devices. On some older devices all characters may simply be replaced by question marks.
2) Screen readers will most often skip them, or read something that sounds very long β as an explanation of each character. Needless to say, this excludes people using assistive technology and contributes to confusion.
This of course also applies to other text-to-speech applications beyond this use-case.
3) Text encoded like this won't be found through search engines, as the Unicode characters are something completely different than standard text typed into the search engine.
In the attached video I demo how a screen reader will read the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In the video, the two words "brown fox" have been written using Unicode characters to give the visual appearance of bold, italicised text.
When you play the video with sound on you will notice how the screen reader is completely silent when coming across those words.
Update: This post is now also available as a blog post, if you wish to share it with people outside LinkedIn, given that it applies to all digital publishing and social media. Here is the link: https://axbom.com/dont-fake-bold-and-italic-text-with-unicode/
#Accessibility #A11y #TheMoreYouKnow