I want a vertical-align property that aligns with the text middle

Icons and other glyph-like symbols appear most consistent with adjacent text when they are aligned with that text's typographic middle (half its cap height). There is currently no vertical-align property that easily accomplishes this: Many projects instead use vertical-align: middle and then push or pull the icon up or down a pixel or two using top, translate or margin to account for the difference.
It would be nice to have an explicit vertical-align: text-middle property.

Here’s an example of what that could look like.