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Comment by hu3 | Hacker News Reader

> Allow pages to choose their own fonts" in settings. Yes, this is nuclear option, but I can attest that I use it time to time, and it is quite usable.

Does this nuke icon fonts? I presume yes.

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Good question! Actually (to my minor dismay): not completely. Disabling "font support" in Firefox surprisingly still has a hatch for "well-known" icon fonts, with intention to prevent "blind" icons in webpages. I believe it is driven by the pref

    browser.display.use_document_fonts.icon_font_allowlist

that contains "FontAwesome" and (Google) Material Icons and Symbols (many, presumably all, variants). So to truly disable all "non-preferred" fonts, we have to both wipe that pref and also change for the

    browser.display.use_document_fonts

to zero. But that's what the GUI checkbox controls, so no need to go to about:config for this one.

Icon fonts are bad for accessibility. Better to use SVG graphics and provide alt text for screen readers.

How so? aria-label= and role= attributes exist, this is not 1999.

What’s bad for usability is using icons on their own. Using icons with visible labels is the best practice among people who actually want their software to be usable.

And of course “bad for usability” becomes absolutely catastrophic for a11y.

For those who prioritize aesthetics over usability and use icons alone though, there are at least a dozen methods to make assistive tech read the names of your icon buttons. Something as simple as aria-label is one way.

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