ADR-0083: The Chemical Record screen tabs its reference fields, and emergency content stays flat

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-09-20

Decisions

D-168 On the Chemical Record surface, only reference fields may sit behind a tab

Above the tab bar, always visible, never behind a control: the Standing Statement, the record's identity, and the links to First Aid, Spill Response and PPE. Behind the tab bar: hazards, health effects, storage and handling, and the Source Span provenance — the fields a Handler reads to understand a chemical rather than to act in an emergency.

The default tab is hazards. The open tab is in the URL as ?tab=, so a tab is linkable and survives a reload.

Context

ADR-0008 carries "this ruling may not be re-decided", and its rejected options begin:

A fourth tab on the chemical summary screen — rejected: fewer screens, but it buries emergency content one level deeper than the spill procedure it sits beside in urgency.

A Handler testing the prototype reported the record screen as unreadable — everything the document says, in one column, on first open. Tabs are the obvious answer and are the shape ADR-0008 already rejected, so the question is not whether to tab but what may go behind one.

First Aid and Spill Response are already separate routes and are deliberately not fields of this surface. What the record actually holds is reference content, and burying reference content one level deeper is not the harm ADR-0008 named.

Decision

Tabs carry the reference fields. Emergency links stay flat above the bar, at the depth ADR-0008 put them. Nothing that a Handler would reach for during an incident moves behind a control.

Rejected options

• Tabs over everything, First Aid and Spill Response included — rejected: it is the option ADR-0008 rejected, in its own words, and it would need an ADR superseding a ruling that says it may not be re-decided.
• No tabs; collapsible panels with hazards open — rejected: it shortens the first screen and touches no ruling, and a long document still scrolls long, which is the complaint.

This ruling may not be re-decided

If your change contradicts an Accepted ADR: stop and raise it. Do not implement over it. Superseding requires a new ADR that says so; never edit an Accepted one.

Consequences

The record opens on one readable topic instead of all of them, and a curator or supervisor can link someone to a specific part of a record.

What becomes hard: a Handler who wants to read everything now presses three more controls, and content behind a closed tab is content a browser's find-in-page will not see.

Coverage

No upstream finding lands here. The ruling came from a Handler's prototype test on 2026-09-20, bounded by ADR-0008's rejected option (D-104).