On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 1:59 PM, May Tee-Galloway <mgalloway@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Just to make sure this q is covered:

A "speech bubble" icon can have a few (but very similar) representations to screen readers. For example:

A "speech bubble" icon next to talk page label means "talk page."

A "speech bubble" icon next to a new talkpage notification means "new message."

Is there a way this is allowed?

Sure.

If you're using WikiFont for the icon then it isn't "read" by screen readers, because it's in the Unicode private use range (and/or because someone adds aria-hidden=true). In your first example the talk page label may be clear enough; in the second if the nearby text isn't clear you would add title="new message on talk page" somewhere in the HTML, and possibly dive into http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/ if you knew what you were doing :)

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=S Page Features engineer