Document guidelines on usage of emojis in GitLab UI text

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Proposal

The goal is to document, what are the guidelines to when to/not to use emojis in GitLab UI text

Background

GitLab Duo Code Review is uses emojis in some of it's responses for example (as of May 2025)

I finished my review and found nothing to comment on. Nice work! 🎉

Is this right or wrong to use emojis like this? Some people have questioned this tone of nice work to be problematic but the focus of this issue is emojis.

Should GitLab Duo use emojis in formatted Markdown responses or should that be a sign that we should be looking for a proper solution that leverages supported icons?

Considerations

  1. Evaluate how it gets announced by different screen readers.
  2. Are different libraries used per OS?
  3. Are there regional differences that could impact meaning (like trash vs. bin)?
  4. Is there other content that helps with context or meaning?
  5. In the past there have been accessibility concerns with emojis in titles Accessibility: Markdown emoji links are not acc... (#25487 - closed)

Claude analysis

Edited by 🤖 GitLab Bot 🤖