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Re: Glossary Tool Tips

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Apr 11, 2012 3:55PM

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 3:35 PM, David Ashleydale wrote:
> Hmm... I guess I was talking about a popup originally then.

Yes, if it requires user activation, then it's a popup, at least
that's how ARIA defines them... kind of.

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

There are no real semantics involved in either, the difference is in
the interaction. Again, tooltips don't require an activation and are
always read in the context of their associated element. Popups require
an activation to be displayed or read.

> they should be able to take some action, such as pressing
> Enter, to indicate that they want to read it.

Interestingly, ARIA does not have a design pattern or markup for such
a thing. I'm not sure why because these are very common.

You'd most likely add aria-haspopup to the link to indicate to the
user that it's not a standard link and that it has a popup. When
activated focus should be set to the popup dialog. The functionality
from that point is really up to you. Again, there's no real ARIA
guidance here.

One could treat the popup as a modal dialog wherein the user must
press Esc or activate "close" to hide the dialog and set focus back to
the original link. Or it could be programmed so that when the dialog
loses focus, focus is set back to the next most logical element in the
page. In this case, it's best to provide the popup dialog element in
the markup immediately after the link that opens it. This way if the
user simply begins reading the dialog and continues on, the screen
reader will continue immediately after the link/dialog content.

Hopefully that helps a bit.

Jared