DST Staging Review: Guidance unclear on when to use indeterminate vs. checkbox group

[shiragoodman]

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Design System Staging Information

Component: checkbox
Staging Review ticket: Design System Staging Review: Checkbox indeterminate state

Findings details

VA.gov Experience Standard - issue: User has enough information to complete a task.
VA.gov Experience Standard - category: Comprehension
This is an issue with the: guidance
High-priority: No
Collab Cycle Reviewer: @erinrwhite (IA), @briandeconinck (Accessibility), @allison0034 (Design)

Description

It's not clear to me when the indeterminate state might be used instead of a regular ol' checkbox group component. The guidance isn't super clear on this. Is this when a list of options is larger than a certain number? Is this when we want people to be able to select all/deselect all easily? I also wonder if the example text itself might be updated with a real potential use-case on VA.gov rather than example data. There's no accompanying component in USWDS so more detail would be helpful here.

The guidance also directs you to the mutually exclusive answer pattern, seems to advise against using the indeterminate state for that pattern. Linking to that pattern with so little supporting guidance is likely to cause confusion around when it is an appropriate choice.

Recommended action

Add more documentation in the guidance...

• When this variant might be used instead of checkbox group
• Limits/minimums on number of suggested items?
• "Real" or at least more VA-specific example content (I realize all the other examples are similar to this one but this is an example that really would benefit from more detail/context)

References

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

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[babsdenney]

Related issue - checkbox with none option