Yes, that helped. In addition to the info in the links I also added some css, because by removing the span's text, there was essentially no element left to click on and trigger the action of the home button. I had to make the span's text cover the entire button, not overflow, be transparent and not selectable. Actually there was a little more because I had to make the selectable text transparent as well since my work only uses ie9 and some of those items don't work.
.customButton span {
color: rgba(0,0,0,0);
line-height: 35px;
display:block;
overflow:hidden;
-webkit-touch-callout: none;
-webkit-user-select: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;
}