Chris Coyier on an accessible implementation for icon fonts:
> Where are we at right now in terms of the best markup for using icon fonts? Let's cover some options I think are currently the best. [...]
And our major goals here are:
> 1. As good of semantics as we can get
> 2. As little awkwardness for screen readers as possible
Spoiler: the key is to map the icons to the _Private Use Area_ instead of "real" characters in the font files and injecting them with pseudo elements.
I'm using [Font Awesome](http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/) on this site which comes with icons mapped to PUA, so everything should be good for screen readers. Only concern to me are the quite ineffective CSS selectors like `[class*=" icon-"]` but this makes it nicely flexible.
