Tooltip role

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