WordPress/gutenberg

Make tooltips dismissable

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#15145 opened on Apr 24, 2019

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Good First Issue[Focus] Accessibility (a11y)

Description

Opening this issue to associate it to the pending PR #8147

As noted in #8033, in some edge cases the Gutenberg tooltips can overlay other buttons in the user interface. Also, according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, tooltips need to be dismissable.

WCAG reference: Success Criterion 1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#content-on-hover-or-focus https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/content-on-hover-or-focus.html

There are 3 items to address to meet the requirement:

  • dismissable
  • hoverable
  • persistent

#8033 made the tooltips persist but the "dismissable" part is missing. The guideline requires "a mechanism to dismiss the additional content without moving pointer hover or keyboard focus", and the suggestion is "by pressing Escape".

The correct behavior was visible, for example, on the previous Gmail interface (you can still revert Gmail to "Classic Gmail" for testing):

  • hover on a button, the tooltip appears and persists
  • don't move the mouse
  • press Escape: the tooltip disappears

Not sure how to implement such a "global" Escape key behavior for all the tooltips in the UI.

For now, #8147 addresses just a first part by making use of onMouseDown:

  • makes the tooltips dismissable when clicking on them
  • prevents the click event on the tooltip to be passed to the button and trigger the associated action
  • adds a cursor: default style to the tooltip

Anyone willing to continue work on #8147 is very welcome!

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javascriptreact
Domain
frontendaccessibility
Issue type
accessibility
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
React basicsJavaScript event handlingAccessibility (WCAG 1.4.13)
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
55
Research direction
The issue builds on PR #8147 which added dismissable tooltips via onMouseDown. The missing part is a global Escape key handler that dismisses tooltips without moving pointer or focus. Review the current tooltip component implementation in the Gutenberg codebase (likely in packages/components/src/tooltip) and add a keydown event listener that dispatches a dismiss action. Also ensure the tooltip remains hoverable and persistent as per WCAG.