Absolutely. But if a web author quite reasonably adds a symbol for the benefit of the sighted majority, using an unlabeled image, an icon font, or coopting an e

Absolutely. But if a web author quite reasonably adds a symbol for the benefit of the sighted majority, using an unlabeled image, an icon font, or coopting an existing symbol (e.g. degrees), that leads to extra clutter or confusion for blind users. If the symbol is in Unicode, we can have a solution that works well for everyone.