AX: Determine correct behavior for Unicode Private Use Area characters

• Component: Accessibility
• Status: NEW ---

[James Craig]

The accessibility behavior for Unicode's private use area https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/block/U+E000 is currently ambiguous. Some web icon font packages are using (possibly misusing) this area for custom icon fonts... 

For example, FontAwesome uses U+F700 as an "otter" icon... https://fontawesome.com/icons?d=gallery&p=2&q=otter&c=animals

FWIW, despite the FontAwesome site claiming "Accessibility-Minded, Font Awesome loves screen readers!" it does not appear that they've attempted to make it accessible, so I would not expect VoiceOver to speak "Otter" 

However, VoiceOver speaks literally "link " , but pronounces it as "link Up Arrow" and renders to the VO caption panel as "link ↑").

This also isn't right, so its worth investigating the behavior. It's not immediately apparent to me where the replacement "↑" character or its spoken "Up Arrow" string is coming from.

https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+F700

I get the same behavior with both Alex and Samantha voices, so it doesn't appear to be coming from the speech engine either.

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/77169314>

[James Craig]

Related to bug 159022