Staging Review finding: Links open in a new tab without warning

[shiragoodman]

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Product Information

Team: Appointments Product: Appointments Feature: Appointment Details Redesign

Findings details

VA.gov Experience Standard - issue: User is taken out of the primary flow without notification. VA.gov Experience Standard - category: Efficiency Launch-blocking: No Design System review: No Collab Cycle Reviewer: @erinrwhite (IA)

Description

Links in the application footer, the link to “Go to My VA Health” on the appointments list, and link to directions in Google Maps on appointments details page open in new tab without warning.

Recommended action

Any links that open in a new tab should include link text at the end of the link that says “(opens in a new tab)”. That said, because users are not in a form flow where they might lose form prgress, links should open in the same tab. See DS guidance on link behavior for more information.

References

• Accessibility Defect Severity: N/A
• WCAG Success Criteria: N/A
• Modality: N/A
• Design System Component: Link
• Design System Pattern or Template: N/A
• Design System Foundation: N/A
• Content Style Guide: Links
• Context: User flow

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Next Steps for the VFS Team

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• [ ] Close this ticket when the issue has been resolved or validated by your Product Owner.

[outerpress]

@sterkenburgsara we're currently opening some links in new pages, and I want to check if we should be:

Links to My VA Health (OH), for example in this alert:

Links to facility locator and the Mobile Health Feedback survey in this screenshot:

All of these are "VA.gov" links, so it sounds like they should:

• Open in the same window when a user is in the appointment lists
• Open in a new tab when a user is on the scheduling flows.

But I'm not sure if we're making exceptions for OH (in particular).

Thanks! FYI @kristenmcconnell @kfink24 - and correct me if i missed anything @erinrwhite

[sterkenburgsara]

For some reason these images aren't rendering for me, but yes @outerpress what you have above sounds right to me. The most updated guidance is to avoid opening links in another tab unless they are task interruptions (such as the scheduling flow), but I defer to OCTO on whether there is value in departing from that for links that go out to the My VA Health (OH) platform. // cc @kfink24 and @kristenmcconnell @mnorthuis @DanielleThierryUSDSVA

[mnorthuis]

@erinrwhite and @sterkenburgsara are correct on the guidance - links should not open in a new tab. The only exception, is if the user is in a form flow and a link will cause them to lose data. I cannot see the attached images above, so I can't confirm that is the case for your links or not, but if the person is in the process of scheduling an appointment, ideally we would avoid offering links out of the experience all together, but if we have to, they can open new tabs and should have link text that indicates that.

[outerpress]

Thanks all! These links appear in both the scheduling flow and the "manage appointment" list pages, so it sounds like we'll need to treat them differently based on context.

Also good to know that we're not treating My VA Health/OH or the Mobile feedback forms as external pages.

[outerpress]

@ldelacosta I added design ticket #88871 to handle this.