WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Tooltip displaying keyboard interaction model for ARIA tabs

for

From: Robert Fentress
Date: Feb 14, 2017 7:03AM

I'm wondering what folks think of the idea of displaying tooltips when
focus is set to a tab in an ARIA tab control widget
<https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/#tabpanel>, that informs the
user to use arrow keys to move between tabs. I think there are good
reasons for using the ARIA tab control pattern and hewing to its keyboard
interaction model, but web users (particularly keyboarders) expect each tab
to be a tab stop and will likely be confused if pressing the Tab key takes
them to the next focusable element within the tab panel, rather than the
next tab in the tablist. Is this a reasonable compromise or hand-holding
that is too verbose?

If you eschew the ARIA pattern altogether, what do you think is the best
strategy for informing screen reader users that these things are tabs and
that clicking on them causes a change in view?

Thanks.

-Rob