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Re: Glossary Tool Tips

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Apr 11, 2012 3:22PM

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Birkir R. Gunnarsson wrote:
> Is there an example of such on that page

The first link in the content area has a tooltip. The link text is
"Tooltips" and the tooltip text is "That's what this widget is".

> Do I need to activate a link with enter to see its tooltip (my
> understanding is that tooltip is totally separate from an activation,
> so activating the link will take me to the link's target and I will
> never see the actual tooltip in that case).

No, the tooltip will be read by the screen reader when the link text
is read. It will be read whether the link is focused via Tab or if
just reading through the text of the page (via arrow keys, etc.). In
some ways, the screen reader treats it as a parenthetical at the end
of the link text. This really is the only suitable option because, as
you note, you can't have Enter activate the tooltip and also activate
the function of the link. Additionally, this allows accessible
tooltips on things other than tabable elements (links and form
controls).

If you want something to display when the link is activated, this is
called a popup (and can be identified on the link with aria-haspopup).
In short, tooltips should always read with the element to which they
are associated, whereas popups require activation on a focusable
element.

Another significant issue with tooltips in general is that they can't
be accessed via standard touch screen interactions except, perhaps,
when focus is set in a form control. Hover is dead on mobile devices!

> You may want to indicate the presence of
> tooltips somehow

This is a bit tricky. There's no ARIA markup to indicate that an
element has a tooltip. The tooltip itself is given role="tooltip", but
screen reader don't do anything special based on this information.
Conceivably they could identify or read the tooltip text differently
than the link text.

Jared