E-mail List Archives
Thread: Accessible Tooltips?
Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)
From: Travis Roth
Date: Fri, Jun 09 2006 9:50AM
Subject: Accessible Tooltips?
No previous message | Next message →
Hi,
Are there any DHTML methods for creating an accessible tooltip that even a
screen reader can read?
By tooltip, I am referring to where extra help text is displayed on the
screen when a link has focus.
If no, would it be an acceptable approach to update the web browser's status
bar with the tooltip content so that a screen reader user could read it
easily by using the screen reader's Say status line command?
Travis Roth
Production Manager
TecAccess, LLC
(804) 749-8646 (office)
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.TecAccess.net
Experts in Section 508 Compliance & Accessibility
NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential
information. If you are not the intended recipient or believe that you may
have
received this communication in error, please reply to the sender indicating
that fact and delete the copy you received. Thank you.
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Sun, Jun 11 2006 4:10PM
Subject: Re: Accessible Tooltips?
← Previous message | Next message →
On Fri, 9 Jun 2006, Travis Roth wrote:
> Are there any DHTML methods for creating an accessible tooltip that even a
> screen reader can read?
"DHTML" (a buzzword for HTML+CSS+JavaScript+DOM, now out fashion in favor
of Ajax) is generally a problem, not a solution in accessibility. What
happens, for example, when client-side scripting is disabled to protect
the user from miscellaneous problems?
> By tooltip, I am referring to where extra help text is displayed on the
> screen when a link has focus.
That's a wrong approach. Don't use tooltips for such things. If help is
needed, give it in the normal content or via a normal link. Specifically,
the title="..." attribute for a link should be understood as an extended
link name, not an extra help text. Whether browsers make the attribute
value accessible to the user is a matter of browser quality rather than
anything else - and should not be counted on.
> If no, would it be an acceptable approach to update the web browser's status
> bar with the tooltip content so that a screen reader user could read it
> easily by using the screen reader's Say status line command?
Of course not. The status line is for indicating the browser status. Some
users look at it. Don't confuse them (and hide potentially essential
information) by messing up the status line. Most users don't look at it,
so your message would mostly be lost. As regards to screen reader users,
why would they give such a command? They have not got, and they should not
have, any reason to expect that the document author is sending them some
special messages there.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: priti
Date: Mon, Jun 12 2006 12:00AM
Subject: Re: Accessible Tooltips?
← Previous message | Next message →
Hi Travis,
I as a visually impaired user will not recommend, the option to update the
status bar. Its a normal tendency of screen reader users to access the
information displayed on the status bar, only when we have activated a
link--to find out the status of the page being loaded or not. Any
information displayed on the status bar, when a link receives focus will go
unnoticed by screen reader users.
As far as tooltip is concerned, users need to turn the tooltip reading
option on, which is not known to many of the screen reader users. It's
always advisable to display additional information within the 'Help' section
of the website.
Regards,
Priti Rohra
Accessibility Tester
Net Systems Informatics (I) Pvt. Ltd.
India
Tel: 91-22-26860485/6 extn: 28
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Url: www.n-syst.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Travis Roth" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "'WebAIM Discussion List'" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 9:04 PM
Subject: [WebAIM] Accessible Tooltips?
Hi,
Are there any DHTML methods for creating an accessible tooltip that even a
screen reader can read?
By tooltip, I am referring to where extra help text is displayed on the
screen when a link has focus.
If no, would it be an acceptable approach to update the web browser's status
bar with the tooltip content so that a screen reader user could read it
easily by using the screen reader's Say status line command?
Travis Roth
Production Manager
TecAccess, LLC
(804) 749-8646 (office)
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.TecAccess.net
Experts in Section 508 Compliance & Accessibility
NOTICE: This communication may contain privileged or other confidential
information. If you are not the intended recipient or believe that you may
have
received this communication in error, please reply to the sender indicating
that fact and delete the copy you received. Thank you.
From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Mon, Jun 12 2006 2:20AM
Subject: Re: Accessible Tooltips?
← Previous message | No next message
> > Are there any DHTML methods for creating an accessible tooltip that even a
> > screen reader can read?
>
> "DHTML" (a buzzword for HTML+CSS+JavaScript+DOM, now out fashion in favor
> of Ajax)
Urgh. Please, if you condemn DHTML (and I got flak for that with my
article[1]) then replace it with DOM scripting. Ajax is a methodology
and is not necessarily limited to browsers and HTML whereas DHTML
always was. It is like saying "Perl is outdated and is replaced by
RUP".
[1] http://icant.co.uk/articles/from-dhtml-to-dom/from-dhtml-to-dom-scripting.html
--
Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/