Hover-Triggered and Focus-Triggered Content
Explore how to handle hover-triggered content accessibility challenges by implementing focus triggers, ARIA roles, and keyboard controls. Understand limitations of hover interactions and learn strategies to create more inclusive tooltips and interactive elements.
We'll cover the following...
One of the many interaction patterns that we can take for granted is the ability to trigger the hiding or showing of content on pointer hovers, such as with tooltips or spoiler-covered text or images. This comes up most often with data visualizations but can also often be seen with menu items, additional help dialogs, and more. There are some tips and tricks we can use to make elements like tooltips a little better. However, ultimately, hover-triggered content is just not an accessible pattern. Our best bet is to use a different approach or provide an alternate source, in addition to the hover-triggered content, to communicate the same information.
Accessibility challenges in hover-triggered content
There are several reasons why hover-triggered content isn’t ideal for accessibility. Some of these can be mitigated with workarounds or adjustments, but others require an entirely different approach to solve. ...