Re: Comment on WAI-ARIA Role: Needs "hint" Role

Hi, Rich-

Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote (on 9/3/08 7:59 AM):
> 
> A tooltip is defined as it should be. 

I'm not asking you to change "tooltip"... I just noted that there are
different possible definitions for the term:

a) a presentation mode, popping up a little textbox that can contain any
arbitrary content with no specific semantic category;

b) a semantic category for giving instructions to the user (i.e., a "tip
on using a tool"), regardless of presentation mode.

What the SVG WG needs is the latter.  What ARIA defines is the former.


> Information on how to interact with an object would use the description role.

No, that's a misuse of the "description" role.  A "description" should
be suitable as a textual replacement for the image, in case the image in
not available or perceivable.

As an example, there might be a graphic of a little horse in an SVG
game, where the goal is to jump the horse over hay bales.  There are
three bits of info the author could provide:
* a title for the element ("A horse")
* a description of the element ("A brown horse with a rider on his back")
* a hint for interacting with the element ("Make the horse jump by
clicking on him or hitting the space bar.")

Each of these is a discrete category for metadata for the element, and
any or all of them may be displayed by a number of means, including as a
tooltip popup on hover or focus (or verbally, or in the status bar, or
superimposed inline over the element, or what have you).

We want to give the user the finest useful degree of control over what
information they want to access.  To do that, we want to avoid
conflating "description" and "instruction" (or "hint").

I hope that clarifies my request.  Is there a problem with adding a new
role for this purpose?


> In HTML there should be a relation to reference it.

I'm not sure how this impacts SVG.

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, WebApps, SVG, and CDF

Received on Thursday, 4 September 2008 20:49:52 UTC