BuddyPress.org

@thirstcard — image replacement techniques for small pieces of text like this are used throughout the web (find a modern website that doesn’t do it somewhere or other) — Google is not going to punish you for this. Have a read around, there are hundreds of articles on this and SEO.

Here’s Jeffrey Zeldman’s post on the latest technique to use: http://www.zeldman.com/2012/03/01/replacing-the-9999px-hack-new-image-replacement/