Re: Footnotes and Tooltips

Thanks for all of the feedback so far.

With the tooltip/hover on footnotes, we find it does help provide a better user experience for the researchers who use our website (We actually got positive feedback from our audience when we added the feature—usually we only hear the bad stuff). When the tooltip does appear, it does cover up some text on the page, but once you hover away, that text is viewable again.  Is this behavior considered inaccessible?

If a user were still able to ‘click’ the footnote number, and jump down to where the footnotes are listed to see the full citation (and then also jump back up), is that considered accessible?  What if we still had the hover ability mentioned above, but knew that for some users the hover/tooltip would not be read by their screen reader, so the user would have to click/jump down to the full citation — is that still considered accessible? 

The more I dig into this, the more I’m thinking we really can’t have accessible tooltips in this situation. I’m having a hard time finding a design/code pattern that does both (Footnotes at the bottom of a page, and accessible hover ability for references in the content). 

Sean - when you have a minute, can you help me track down the examples from Smashing - I just searched their site pretty thoroughly and can’t find the content you mentioned. 

Jeana Clark
jclark@veritashealth.com




> On Apr 27, 2020, at 9:32 PM, Murphy, Sean <SeanMichael.Murphy@team.telstra.com> wrote:
> 
> The smashing magazine has good examples on accessible tooltips with keyboards which I would recommend. The pattern supports keyboards.
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> Sean Murphy | Accessibility expert/lead
> Digital Accessibility manager
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> From: caroline <woodward.caroline@gmail.com <mailto:woodward.caroline@gmail.com>> 
> Sent: Tuesday, 28 April 2020 11:20 AM
> To: Jeana Clark <jclark@veritashealth.com <mailto:jclark@veritashealth.com>>
> Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org <mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: Footnotes and Tooltips
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> Hi Jeana,  
> I was wondering, forgive my ignorance but if navigated using keyboard, would the hover be triggered when it gained focus? If yes, would any pertinent information be covered by the appearance of that information before the user could see it?
>  
> When thinking about using hovers some things I have check for is whether the hover will impact keyboard-only users, also not all screen-reader users are blind, I'm guessing this is solely for desk top. 
>  
> I know it's not exactly what you're looking for but wondered if their may be something impacted by that. 
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> On Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 4:55 PM Jeana Clark <jclark@veritashealth.com <mailto:jclark@veritashealth.com>> wrote:
> This seems like a great tutorial on how to add footnotes to your website and have them be accessible: https://www.sitepoint.com/accessible-footnotes-css/ <https://www.sitepoint.com/accessible-footnotes-css/>
>  
> However, my client has requested that they also have a hoverability/tooltip aspect to them. Where you can hover or keyboard tab to the footnote, and it displays the footnote on the screen in context of the content you’re reading. Sara Soueidn had this great write up about trying to achieve tooltips without javascript… but in the end determined that, to do it well, you really do need javascript: https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-tooltips/ <https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-tooltips/>
>  
> Does anyone have a complete solution (or guidance) for footnotes + hover that is considered accessible?
>  
> Thanks,
> Jeana
> 
> 
> Jeana Clark
> Creative Director
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> Tel: 847.607.8577
> jclark@veritashealth.com <mailto:jclark@veritashealth.com>
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