This is a very (very) specific question, but would it be appropriate to use the alt attribute for a pre tag when using that to show ASCII art? It's essentially like an image (which wouldn't be intelligible using a screen reader), so using alt makes sense.
<pre alt="A cute little blob creature">༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ</pre>
Would is be read by a screen reader? Would this be appropriate or good form?
(I could imagine other situations where this might arise, like using a typographical object to denote a particular action, such as a "home" link.)
The aria-label attribute exists for this purpose.
<pre aria-label="A cute little blob creature">༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ</pre>
For more information, check out this MDN article on it.