In this article, I try to summarize the best practices mentioned by various accessibility experts and their work (like this, this, and this) into a single article that’s easy to read, understand, and apply.
Let’s begin.
What are tooltips?
Tooltips are used to provide simple text hints for UI controls. Think of them as tips for tools. They’re basically little bubbles of text content that pop up when you hover over an unnamed control (like the bell icon in Stripe).
If you prefer more of a formal definition, Sarah Highley provides us with a pretty good one:
A “tooltip” is a non-modal (or non-blocking) overlay containing text-only content that provides supplemental information about an existing UI control. It is hidden by default, and becomes available on hover or focus of the control it describes.
She further goes on to say:
That definition could even be narrowed down even further by saying tooltips must provide only descriptive text.
This narrowed definition is basically (in my experience) how every accessibility expert defines tooltips:
Heydon Pickering takes things even further, saying: If you’re thinking of adding interactive content (even an ok
button), you should be using dialog
instead.
In his words:
You’re thinking of dialogs. Use a dialog.
Two kinds of tooltips
Tooltips are basically only used for two things:
- Labeling an icon
- Providing a contextual description of an icon
Heydon separates these cleanly into two categories, “Primary Label” and “Auxiliary description” in his Inclusive Components article on tooltips and toggletips).
Labeling
If your tooltip is used to label an icon — using only one or two words — you should use the aria-labelledby
attribute to properly label it since it is attached to nothing else on the page that would help identify it.
Notifications
You could provide contextual information, like stating the number of notifications, by giving a space-separated list of id
s to aria-labelledby
.
Notifications
Providing contextual description
If your tooltip provides a contextual description of the icon, you should use aria-describedby
. But, when you do this, you also need to provide an accessible name for the icon.
In this case, Heydon recommends including the label as the text content of the button. This label would be hidden visually from sighted users but read for screen readers.
Then, you can add aria-describedby
to include the auxiliary description.
View and manage notifications settings
Here, screen readers would say “3 notifications” first, followed by “view and manage notifications settings” after a brief pause.
Additional tooltip dos and don’ts
Here are a couple of additional points you should be aware of:
Do:
Don’t:
- Don’t use the
title
attribute. Much has been said about this so I shall not repeat them. - Don’t use the
aria-haspopup
attribute with thetooltip
role becausearia-haspopup
signifies interactive content whiletooltip
should contain non-interactive content. - Don’t include essential content inside tooltips because some screen readers may ignore
aria-labelledby
oraria-describedby
. (It’s rare, but possible.)
Tooltip limitations and alternatives
Tooltips are inaccessible to most touch devices because:
- users cannot hover over a button on a touch device, and
- users cannot focus on a button on a touch device.
The best alternative is not to use tooltips, and instead, find a way to include the label or descriptive text in the design.
If the “tooltip” contains a lot of content — including interactive content — you may want to display that information with a Toggletip (or just use a element).
Heydon explains toggletips nicely and concisely:
Toggletips exist to reveal information balloons. Often they take the form of little “i” icons.
These informational icons should be wrapped within a element. When opened, screen readers can announce the text contained in it through a live region with the
status
role.
This clarifies whatever needs clarifying
Speaking anymore about toggletips detracts this article from tooltips so I’ll point you to Heydon’s “Tooltips and Toggletips” article if you’re interested in chasing this short rabbit hole.
That’s all you need to know about tooltips and their current best practices!