Improve iconography usability by adding a legend

Created on 24 May 2022, about 2 years ago
Updated 9 May 2024, about 2 months ago

Problem/Motivation

The iconography, while still being improved, are never going to be so perfect that it's clear what they mean. We need to be able to communicate in words what the shield and/or "wrench" (TBD) icons mean.

Proposed resolution

  1. Use a tooltip when hovering the icons. (this is not accessible, but could be made so if we added a touch action and a real popup)
  2. Add a legend to the design, something like [symbol] = text to describe

Please add other suggestions as they come up.

Remaining tasks

  • βœ… File an issue about this project
  • ☐ Design
  • ☐ Implement
  • ☐ Code review from 1 Drupal core team member
  • ☐ Full testing and approval
  • ☐ Credit contributors
  • ☐ Review with the product owner
  • ☐ Release

User interface changes

TBD: May add legend, tooltips, or something else.

✨ Feature request
Status

Needs work

Version

1.0

Component

User experience

Created by

πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States chrisfromredfin Portland, Maine

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  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States chrisfromredfin Portland, Maine
  • Status changed to Needs work 8 months ago
  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States chrisfromredfin Portland, Maine

    Removing from Postponed as the dependency has been committed.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States johnpicozzi Providence, RI

    I'm not going to lie the addition of a legend doesn't feel as helpful as a tooltip (title text) on the icon on the card. I know this is being discussed. https://www.drupal.org/project/project_browser/issues/3293909 πŸ› Security and maintained icons require alt text, should not use title attribute Active however, my feeling from a user standpoint is that a legend could easily be ignored or not helpful because it's not on the card itself and viewable all the time.

  • I disagree that a legend isn't helpful. Accessibility guidelines suggest that icons should be accompanied by visible text descriptions wherever feasible, and tooltips are generally not an option when a user isn't using a pointer device. This makes the alt-vs-title attribute issue πŸ› Security and maintained icons require alt text, should not use title attribute Active less of a problem because visible text should always be read by screen readers, and it makes icon descriptions available when not using pointer devices. While it'd take some rearranging, I think it'd be more than feasible to include brief text descriptions in the cards. It could even be something like "Covered" and "Maintained" with a more verbose description in the detail view (which is effectively what we're doing already).

    More broadly, I feel especially for people new to Drupal that we'd rather make this information readily visible instead of making them go out of their way find out what it means. I feel like "hover over something for a tooltip describing it" is no longer something we can count on people to know to do β€” if it's even possible on their device.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States MrMason

    I'm of the opinion that having a title and alt tag for an icon is more than enough. Adding a legend just clutters the display.

    If we wanted to have easily visible text a hover effect where hovering over an icon would reveal text could be an option, but I feel that for now an alt and title are more than enough.

Production build 0.69.0 2024