Content on hover or focus

Silktide prompts you to verify that content revealed by hovering or keyboard focus - tooltips, dropdown menus, preview cards - behaves as success criterion 1.4.13 (level AA) requires.

This is a : automation cannot hover and focus every trigger on a page and interact with what appears, so Silktide raises the prompt on each page and a person confirms it.

Why this matters

Content that pops up on hover or focus is problematic for several groups unless it behaves carefully:

Screen magnifier users view the page at high zoom and must move the pointer over to a pop-up to read it. If the pop-up disappears the moment the pointer leaves its trigger, it can never be read.
People with motor tremors hover things by accident. A pop-up that can only be dismissed by moving the pointer away forces precise movements they may not be able to make.
Anyone who needs more time loses content that hides itself on a timer.

What to check

For each element that reveals content on hover or keyboard focus, verify all three:

Dismissible - the revealed content can be closed without moving the pointer or focus, typically by pressing Escape. (Exception: it doesn't obscure anything, like a form field's error hint appearing in otherwise empty space.)
Hoverable - if hover triggered it, the pointer can move on to the revealed content without it disappearing.
Persistent - it stays visible until the user dismisses it, moves away, or the information stops being valid. No auto-hide timers.

Native title attribute tooltips are exempt (the browser controls them), but they have their own problems - see Title attribute labeling.

How to fix it

Add an Escape handler that hides the pop-up while the trigger keeps focus.
Keep the pop-up open while the pointer is over the pop-up itself, not just the trigger - either nest the pop-up in the trigger's DOM or bridge the gap with a hover-tolerant area.
Remove setTimeout-style auto-dismissal from tooltips and menus.

If every hover- or focus-revealed element on the page complies (or the page has none), the finding.

How Silktide tests this

Silktide cannot yet detect hover and focus triggers automatically, so this check raises one review prompt per page describing what to verify. No automated tool currently tests 1.4.13 - there is no W3C ACT rule for it. We plan to detect likely triggers (hover-bound listeners, CSS-revealed content) in a future version so the prompt only fires on pages that need it.