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

Doug,

A tooltip is defined as it should be. Information on how to interact with
an object would use the description role. In HTML there should be a
relation to reference it.

Rich


Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review  Board
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer


                                                                           
             Doug Schepers                                                 
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                                       Comment on WAI-ARIA Role: Needs     
             09/02/08 09:17 PM         "hint" Role                         
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           





Hi, ARIA fans-

I've been working on the SVG <title> and <desc> bits of the SVG 1.2 Tiny
spec to make them more usable and interoperable, and I briefly discuss
ARIA in that context.

In addition to the "description" role, I mention the "tooltip" role.
However, upon re-reading the description of "tooltip", it seems that it
uses the more general definition of the term, meaning a popup or
hover-box, rather then the more specific original use, that of an
informative hint on how to interact with the object in question (e.g., a
hint that tells the user to click on an element, to hit enter, to enter
some specific type of data into a textbox, etc.).

I suggest that you introduce a role that means exactly that, separate
from the presentation method (a popup box).  You might call it "hint" or
"instruction".  That would be useful for form controls, and for general
use of interfaces.  A user could have such hints available on
focus/mouseover as tooltips, or toggle them on and off as static text
for the whole document (displaying them inline next to or under the
relevant element they give an instruction about).

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#description
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#tooltip

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