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Re: Glossary Tool Tips

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From: David Ashleydale
Date: Apr 11, 2012 3:35PM

Hmm... I guess I was talking about a popup originally then.

What would you say is the semantic difference between a tooltip and a
popup? Why would you use one instead of the other?

I was thinking about things like glossary terms where some users will want
to read it and some won't. I don't want to force non mouse users to *have*
to read them -- they should be able to take some action, such as pressing
Enter, to indicate that they want to read it.

David

On Wednesday, April 11, 2012, Jared Smith wrote:

> 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
> > > >