Use emojis, not emoticons

Emojis are little symbols — 🙂 is an example — whereas emoticons are constructed with punctuation marks — for example, a colon followed by close-parenthesis is used to indicate a smiley-face, or this representation of Ronald Reagan:  7:^)] — looks cute, but a visually impaired person hears the screen reader say “seven colon carat close-parenthesis close-bracket,” uninformative if not tedious.

Emojis have built-in alt text descriptions and will be parsed as text by a screen reader. Emoticons are manipulated punctuation marks and will be read out as punctuation marks.

That’s from an interesting and informative page, Emojis, which begins:

Following this helps people with:

• time-pressures: not having to guess what emojis mean saves time
• stress: confusing content can increase stress levels
• multi-tasking: if meaning is clear this is easier to do
• cognitive impairments: trying to work out meaning increases cognitive load
• sight loss: be aware of emoji alt text and contrast levels
• autism: emphasing the feeling you want to express may be helpful

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Guidelines

In a face to face conversation you communicate with tone and body language, as well as words, to help express what you mean. Emojis are small, digital expressions that can be used to represent many things, including objects, people, actions, ideas. They can:

• support meaning
• add feeling
• be fun to use

Emojis are a recognised aspect of . . .

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