The defendants call themselves the Tumultuous Tooltips. They’ve been on tour across the internet’s forms since the early 2000s, playing one-second sets to anyone whose mouse happens to wander past, and leaving before anyone can read the lyrics.
Judge Patricia Semantics is presiding. The band arrived late, appeared briefly beside the defense table, and vanished when the bailiff walked toward them.
The defendants
The clerk read the band’s lineup into the record.
- The Info Icon, lead singer. A small “i” in a circle, often sitting next to the one field you most need help with.
- Flicker, guitar. Appears on hover and disappears when you move your mouse toward it to read it.
- The Title Attribute, the band’s founding member. Shows up a full second late, looks different in every browser, and has never once appeared for a keyboard user.
- The Coverup, drums. Opens directly on top of the field you’re typing in.
The charges
- Hiding required information. Investigators found password rules, date formats, and a cancellation fee hidden inside the Info Icon.
- Vanishing when approached. Content that appears on hover or focus has to stay put while people move the pointer over it, and it has to stay until they dismiss it. That’s WCAG success criterion 1.4.13, and Flicker has been violating it since 2018.
- Ignoring touch and keyboard users. There’s no hover on a phone. A tooltip that only appears on hover doesn’t appear at all.
Opening statements
Defense: My clients keep interfaces clean. Without them, all that helpful information would just be sitting there on the screen, visible.
Prosecution: Your Honor, I’d like that entered as a confession.
The witnesses
The first witness was Marcus, who was creating an account on his phone. The password field rejected his password three times. The rules were in the Info Icon.
“I tapped it,” he said. “My phone selected the word ‘Password’ and offered to look it up in the dictionary.”
Next, Priya testified that she was using a desktop and finally got the password rules to appear. She moved her mouse toward them so she could read the last one. Flicker vanished as she crossed the four-pixel gap between the icon and the tooltip.
“I did that eleven times,” she said. “I started approaching it slowly, like a deer.”
A keyboard user testified that he tabbed to every icon on the page. None of them did anything. The Title Attribute, seated at the defense table, appeared next to his head about a second later, then disappeared again.
The expert witness
The prosecution called Helper Text.
Prosecution: What do you do, exactly?
Helper Text: I sit under the field. I’m visible. People read me before they type, and I’m still there while they type.
Prosecution: That’s it?
Helper Text: That’s it. Nobody’s ever written a song about me.
The cooperating witness
The Toggletip agreed to testify in exchange for leniency. It’s a real button that opens a bubble when you click or tap it, and the bubble stays open until you close it or press Escape.
“I used to tour with these guys,” it said. “Then I realized people should get to read the thing they asked to read.”
The verdict
Guilty on all counts.
Sentencing
The judge ordered the band to break up, with the following terms:
- Anything people need to finish a task goes in visible text, like Helper Text, the instructions above a form, or the error message itself.
- Tooltips may only carry extra information, like the name of an icon-only button.
- Every remaining tooltip appears on keyboard focus as well as hover, stays open while the pointer is over it, and closes with Escape.
- Anything people might need to tap goes in a toggletip.
- The Title Attribute is retired. It was offered a farewell tour and is expected to arrive about a second after it starts.
The band announced its final show. It will appear only on hover.
This case is part of the UI Court series.