Stop 🄳🄾🄸🄽🄶 🅃🄷🄸🅂

There has been a trend on social media to have emoji and unicode fonts in your profile. Something like, ℙ𝕖𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℙ𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕖𝕣. It’s nothing new, but has become a lot more popular. I’m sure you’ve seen it.

So why is it bad? It makes the web a lot less accessible.

1. It is impossible to search. If you put any important information in a font like this it will be very difficult for other people to find. If you put something like your name in these fonts, how will anyone find you?

2. It is impossible for screen readers to translate the text. This is a much bigger issue than searching. The internet, and specifically social media, can be used by everyone and should be accessible to everyone.

3. It looks different. Fonts like this render differently based on OS, browser, app, etc. Because it works on your iPhone does’t mean it will show up on a desktop. They aren’t universal (which gets back to them not being accessible).

</rant>