Re: aria-rowindex and aria-colindex

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 4:55 PM, Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs@igalia.com> wrote:

> On 01/28/2015 04:11 PM, Alexander Surkov wrote:
> > But why? having aria-colindex on cell makes my example possible. It
> > doesn't look any better than on row.
>
> From a conceptual and property naming point of view, I think it does
> look better on the cell.
>

> In my mind, a "column index" describes the column number in which a
> given cell is located. In other words, a "column index" is one half of a
> cell's coordinates.


I think here's a problem since your description means that cell can be
moved all around the table through columns. In particular the web author
can do

<table>
  <tr>
    <td aria-colindex="2">2nd col</td>
    <td aria-colindex="1">1st col</td>
  </tr>
</table>


Also that means it overrides the native semantics that Dominic was against
of. I'd say that the column index is a property of *set* of cells and not a
property of an individual cell, thus you cannot override column position on
the cell itself and thus the cell is not right place for aria-colindex
attribute.



> What you're describing seems more like the "first
> visible column" which, as I believe you suggest in a different response,
> is a property of the table.
>

> Naming issues aside, let's say we put this property on the row or table
> rather than on the cell.


right, just attribute on the table to specify amount of skipped
rows/columns should be good for spreadsheat use case.


> What then happens if we have a case where there
> is a gap. Like in a spreadsheet in which certain columns are hidden?
> What would the value of your property contain?
>

I wasn't aware of this use case. If cells are hidden then should be they
taken into account when counting? Also I'm curious if doesn't mean that
native semantics is overridden by that. Otherwise than that the
aria-colindex attribute approach can work here but you have to be very
cautious defining this attribute. For example, it would worked out if
aria-colindex was allowed on cells of the first row only, aria-rowindex was
allowed on rows only.

But if we don't want to support this use case then I think I prefer
properties right on the table element, plain and easy.



>
> --joanie
>