# Toggle Labels With Icons - Personalizing Accessibility

DevFeed: [Toggle Labels With Icons - Personalizing Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/toggle-labels-with-icons-personalizing-accessibility-38480.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://eevis.codes/blog/2024-04-21/toggle-labels-with-icons-personalizing-accessibility/>)

Author: Eevis Panula

Published: 2025-06-11T04:23:15.051000Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Eevis Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/eevis-blog.md>)

Topics: [Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/accessibility.md>), [personalization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/personalization.md>), [Icons](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/icons.md>), [ui](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ui.md>), [User interface design](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ui-design.md>), [User experience (UX)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ux.md>), [implementation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/implementation.md>)

Tags: [accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [icons](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/icons.md>), [implementation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/implementation.md>), [personalization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/personalization.md>), [ui](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ui.md>), [users](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/users.md>), [ux](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ux.md>)

## AI overview

This tutorial explains how personalization can improve accessibility by letting users toggle text labels alongside icons. It discusses why unlabeled icons can be difficult to understand for some users and outlines a settings-based implementation using a data store.

## Source excerpt

As mentioned in my previous blog post, Personalizing Accessibility with Settings, accessibility for the broadest group of users often requires some personalization. What is accessible for one might not be accessible for another. In this blog post, I will discuss one example of accessibility issues that could be solved with the help of settings: Icons and the need for text labels accompanying them. As you can see from the next section, this particular issue is personal to me, and I wanted to give an example of how to solve it. Why? Icons are not universal. I can't tell you how many times I've opened an app, seen icons (without labels), and wondered what the heck they mean. Where do they lead me? What happens if I press the button with an icon? Do I get to the place I'm looking for? Or does my phone explode? Who knows. The UI is not communicating it to me. I know UX people say that it's about learning. "If you just use the app for long enough, you'll learn". But the thing is, I've had a TBI, which has affected... You guessed right, my memory. So, I find it super frustrating when there are all kinds of symbols I don't understand without text labels, and I have no idea what to do with them. These apps make me frustrated. And that's not the goal of an app, right? On the other hand, I know some people benefit from not having those labels present. Also, almost every designer I've talked to about this topic seemed to think that having text in the UI is ugly (yes, I'm exaggerating a bit.) So, I'm coming up with a solution to help both groups - those who need the labels and those who don't need them: Personalization -- a setting in the app to toggle showing labels with icons. How? This section will present one way to add this toggle in settings. It's not a complete solution, as the actual implementation varies based on your app's architectural patterns. It aims to provide guidelines on how to do things by showing one example. Settings Data Store The first step is to add settin