Custom Icons

Menu 1

To programmatically change the icons after initial setup:
$("selector").accordion("option", "icons", {header: "desiredIconString", activeHeader: "desiredIconString"});

A list of icon strings for jQuery UI CSS can be found here.

Menu 2

This accordion menu has different icons on the left side of the headers. These can be from a predefined set of icons or custom images.

Code

<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

        <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.4/themes/cupertino/jquery-ui.css"/>
    
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.2.min.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.4/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>

        <script type="text/javascript">
            // $(function() { code }); executes the contained code when the DOM is finished loading
            $(function()
            {
                $("#example").accordion( // Call the accordion method on the element with the id example
                {
                    icons:
                    {
                        // Set icons' header option to desired icon
                        "header": "ui-icon-arrowthick-1-s", 
                        // Set icons' activeHeader option to desired icon
                        "activeHeader": "ui-icon-arrowthick-1-e" 
                    }
                });
            });
        </script>
    </head>

    <body>
        <div id="example">
            <h3>Menu 1</h3>
            <p>This is some placeholder content in a p element.</p>
            <h3>Menu 2</h3>
            <p>This is more placeholder content in a second p element.
                It is coded directly below an h element which jQuery's
                accordion method turns into the header you see above this content.
            </p>
            <h3>Code</h3>
            <pre> *** This is what you are viewing *** </pre>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>