Month: July 2019

Description

Tooltip is a small bubble that appears when hover over or focus on the element and it provides the contextual information of the triggering element. To give you a simple example, we sometimes see question mark (help) icons beside the elements on the web. When we hover over or focus on this question mark icon then it displays the contextual information of that particular element. Now the question is that how to make these tooltips accessible to people with disabilities. Let us look into that. Authors tend to use HTML title attribute to display the tooltip as title attribute belongs to the native HTML but it is not suggested though. The reason is that the HTML title attribute is not well supported in the cross browser platforms, especially mobile/touch phones. Even though HTML title attribute belongs to the native HTML, it is the fact that support of the title attribute is not so great. Thus, the option of using HTML title attribute to display the tooltip is not encouraged. Instead of using HTML title attribute, Authors must use different techniques (such as scripts, CSS, and so on…) to display the tooltip. While constructing the tooltips with the different techniques, authors need to make sure that tooltip gets displayed even on focus along with the on hover. When authors follow this on focus pattern along with on hover pattern then the tooltip is going to be accessible to keyboard users. Now the question is that, if the tooltip is accessible to the keyboard users then do you think tooltip is going to be accessible to the screen reader users as well automatically?  Answer is no. There are some additional efforts authors need to put in order to make the tooltips accessible to the screen reader users. Let us look into that.

It is pretty simple to make the tooltips accessible to screen reader users. The solution is ARIA. Authors need to use just ARIA tooltip role to make the tooltips accessible to the screen reader users. To know how to use/implement ARIA tooltip role, please follow author’s notes section in this article. It is important to note that tooltip semantics/role would not be communicated to the users by most of the screen readers in spite of tooltip role is applied to the appropriate container. Not announcing the tooltip semantics/role is absolutely fine as long as tooltip information is conveyed with short delay or no delay to the users. Authors also need to remember that tooltips content should be short and sweet! The main reason for asking the tooltips content to be shorter is that screen reader announces the complete tooltip information at a time to the users and there is no provision for the users to navigate the tooltip content character by character/word by word/line by line and so on… when the tooltip is constructed as per the ARIA specification. With this restriction, screen reader users would not be able to comprehend the content very easily if the tooltip content is so longer unless user listens to the content again and again from the beginning. Thus, the request for the authors is that keep the tooltip content as short as possible.

There is common misconception that tooltip and non-modal dialog are one and the same but they are different. Typically, tooltips would not have any focusable elements whereas non-modal dialog would have focusable elements.

Author notes

• Tooltip role must be set on the element that serves as the tooltip container.
• aria-describedby must be set on the element that triggers the tooltip and it references the tooltip element
• Tooltip widgets should not receive focus and A hover that contains focusable elements must be made using a non-modal dialog
• Focus must stay on the triggering element while the tooltip is displayed
• The tooltip widget must be shown via both on focus and hon hover
• The tooltip widget must be hidden by removing focus from the element or by moving the mouse off the element
• The tooltip widget should be hidden by pressing the Escape key
• tooltip should not be disappeared while it’s being hovered

Sample code snippet

<div class=”ttipcontainer”>

  <button  class=”co_tooltipElement” id=”newButton05-2″ aria-describedby=”coid_accessibleTooltip_1″> Recent Searches </button>

  <span tabindex=”-1″ class=”co_accessibilityLabel” id=”coid_accessibleTooltip_1″ aria-hidden=”true” role=”tooltip”>Shows information of your recent searches</span>

</div>

Reference’s

• APG: Tooltip(work in progress)
• Tooltips and toggle tips by Heydon works
• Oaa tooltip example
• Practical ARIA examples by Heydon
• JQuery accessible simple tooltip, using ARIA

There is nothing wrong using ARIA to remediate/fix the accessibility issues as long as the authors have thorough knowledge on how and when to use ARIA. At the same time, we need to remember that misuse of ARIA damages the accessibility much more than not having ARIA. There is a saying like no ARIA is better than bad ARIA. This blog post attempts to highlight some of the common mistakes that author does while remediating the accessibility issues with the help of ARIA.

WAI-ARIA mistake #01: Incorrect WAI-ARIA syntax

As you know, most technologies require a certain syntax in order for things to work as expected. Similarly, WAI-ARIA also requires a certain syntax in order for things to work the way they’re supposed to. Failing to provide the correct syntax can lead to unexpected results. Let’s discuss some of the common syntax errors that author introduce in their code, and result in assistive technologies not working as expected.

• Role values are assumed to be case insensitive: Role values define the purpose of objects in the page. Authors often fail to implement these values following the lowercase convention established by the WAI-ARIA specification. For example, role=”LINK” can be provided, with the value types in as uppercase letters and as a result, assistive technologies cannot identify the object as a link. Authors need to remember that role values are case sensitive, and need to be typed in lowercase.
• Incorrect spelling for attributes or values: Attributes are often spelled incorrectly. For example, aria-label might be spelled out as aria-lable. As a result, screen readers fail to announce the accessible name of the control. Authors need to be mindful and make sure attributes are spelled correctly.
• Incorrect or invalid role declarations: Authors sometimes declare roles incorrectly. For example, role=”alert” might be declared as aria-role=”alert”. As a result, screen readers will fail to announce the live message. Authors need to avoid such mistakes and make sure to declare the roles appropriately using role=””, and not aria-role=””.
• Role do not exist or are invalid: Authors sometimes provide a role that does not exist according to the WAI-ARIA specification, somehow thinking it will still work, or will serve the same purpose. For example, authors might provide role=”error” for the error message in an attempt to convey the error semantics, but there is no such thing as role=”error” in the specification. Authors should become very familiar with the allowed role values to avoid such issues.

WAI-ARIA mistake #02: Children roles without parent roles

                Authors frequently define children roles on objects without first defining their parent role. As you may or may not know, certain roles cannot be used without their related parent/context roles. For example, a tab role might be defined without its tablist parent role. As a result, screen              readers may not work as expected. Some screen reader and browser combinations will still provide the information as expected, but others won’t, making it a very unreliable solution. Authors need to make sure that children roles are provided with their contextual or related parent roles.

WAI-ARIA mistake #03: Parent roles without children roles

Similarly, many times we see authors provide a parent role without defining the expected related children roles. As you may or may not know from the specification, certain roles cannot be defined without also defining their related children roles. For example, when menu or menubar roles are defined without the expected menuitem children roles for related objects, screen readers may not be able to convey the relationship as expected. Again, some screen reader and browser combinations will still provide the information as expected, but others won’t, making it a very unreliable solution. Authors need to make sure that parent roles are provided with their contextual or related children roles.

WAI-ARIA mistake #04: Invalid ID value references

We frequently see authors providing incorrect or inaccurate ID reference values for certain attributes. As you may or may not know, attributes are set to only accept ID references as their respective values, such as the aria-labelledby, aria-describedby, and aria-errormessage attributes. If authors provide an incorrect ID value, or assign an ID that does not exist in the document, then screen readers will not be able to create the reference and announce the information as expected (ex: the element’s label, the related instructions, the error message, etc). To avoid these situations, authors need to make sure that the ID values that are defined for WAI-ARIA attributes are valid.

WAI-ARIA mistake #05: Allowed WAI-ARIA attributes missing

We often see authors use WAI-ARIA attributes in ways that go against what is defined in the specification, hoping to make things better for accessibility. As you may or may not know, certain roles only allow for certain attributes. As an example, authors might assign aria-selected=”true” to the anchor/link element, falsely thinking that screen readers will announce the selected state of the anchor/link. However, since aria-selected is not allowed on link elements as per the WAI-ARIA spec, screen readers will NOT announce the selected state of such an element. On the other hand, when aria-selected attributes are used with certain roles such as treeitem, tab, gridcell and so on, it can work really well. Authors need to make sure that the attributes they assign to particular roles are allowed for those roles.

WAI-ARIA mistake #06: Required WAI-ARIA attributes missing

We sometimes see authors define WAI-ARIA roles without defining their expected required attributes. As you may or may not know, certain WAI-ARIA roles cannot be defined without also defining their expected required attributes. For example, when the slider role is defined on an object, certain attributes such as aria-valuemin, aria-valuemax and aria-valuenow must also be defined. Failing to do so results in screen readers not conveying the information as expected. Therefore, authors need to make sure they provide all expected required roles and attributes when a particular WAI-ARIA role is used.

Oh, wait! I have a quick tip

If you are wondering how to catch all these 6 mistakes then use Deque axe  tool. Yes, AXE catches all of the 6 mistakes that we have discussed in this blog post. You just need to run the AXE tool and that is all, it throws the issues!

References

• WAI ARIA 1.1 specification