Control Pictures

• Designers should use control pictures to ensure visibility for accessibility, especially in icon-heavy UI where glyphs are converted from text.
• Keep a consistent glyph style with related blocks, like Geometric shapes or Box-drawing, to avoid visual noise.
• Avoid combining control pictures with unrelated emoji or color cues that could mislead screen readers.
• Test rendering across platforms to verify that control characters render as expected for assistive tech users.
• Document any typography assumptions in design specs so developers implement correct font family and fallback behavior.

Control Pictures sit at the intersection of typography and accessibility. They encode non-printing control codes as visible symbols, which helps users understand system messages and control flows when text alone would be opaque. This approach can improve comprehension in multi-language interfaces and in environments with limited support for rich icons.

In practice, control pictures are most effective when used consistently alongside related symbol families, such as Arrows or Currency Symbols. Pitfalls include overuse, misalignment with platform conventions, or failing to provide alt text for assistive technologies. A low-risk, high-reward use is to adopt clear, labeled controls and maintain a simple visual language. Historically, control pictures emerged from needs to make non-printing codes legible in UI scenarios, pairing text with symbolic cues to convey status and actions without relying on language alone.