Development:Usability issues - Hiding

I would like to see how the community responds to this idea. Would distinguishing between visible and accessible cause more confusion than it is worth? If we continue to use an icon, how do we toggle through three or more options? I think it is important for users to have a sense of what their choices are so it becomes challenging and I would be curious as to how this has been resolved in other UIs. Of course, there is the classic dispute of whether the icon displays the current value or the value to be implemented. How can we be consistent about that and write a rule or set of policies that would allow users to know what they are doing and help developers code it. Are there times/circumstances when the open eyeball should be called hide.gif? I know there have been a couple of time when I've gotten confused about what the open eyeball or closed eyeball really meant depending on the context. I would want to know where we are using that icon throughout Moodle and to ensure that we are being as consistent as possible.