RE: APG grid pattern text ready for review

“Omitting header cells is not distinctive enough.
What should screen readers use as information to distinguish between the cases? Should they guess?”

Currently that is what screen readers do, they guess. A table that has no headers is implicitly a layout table because there is nothing to definitively identify the table as a data table. All data tables must have headers, otherwise they will not be reliably conveyed by ATs as data tables.

“ One-column layout grids: LISTS.
They are frequent.
Shouldn’t there be a explicit indication for this a screen reader can use NOT to say “Grid” but “List” instead?”

A list is a different role type, and a grid is not the same thing as a list. A grid for example is an interactive widget, whereas a list is a structural role that is not.

I have experienced cases where an interactive grid is converted into a listbox, however this requires a redrawing of the widget type in the DOM and they are not the same structure.


Bryan Garaventa
Accessibility Fellow
SSB BART Group, Inc.
bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com
415.624.2709 (o)
www.SSBBartGroup.com

From: Schnabel, Stefan [mailto:stefan.schnabel@sap.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2016 4:48 AM
To: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com>; ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: RE: APG grid pattern text ready for review

Matt,

Besides from commenting in [2], I miss two very central points in the grid pattern text:


è Distinguishing between layout and data grid in code by explicit attribute declaration.
Omitting header cells is not distinctive enough.
What should screen readers use as information to distinguish between the cases? Should they guess?

è One-column layout grids: LISTS.
They are frequent.
Shouldn’t there be a explicit indication for this a screen reader can use NOT to say “Grid” but “List” instead?

Best Regards
Stefan



From: Matt King [mailto:a11ythinker@gmail.com]
Sent: Montag, 18. Juli 2016 03:07
To: ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org<mailto:public-aria@w3.org>>
Subject: APG grid pattern text ready for review

The documentation (not yet the code examples) for the ARIA 1.1 grid design pattern is ready for review[1].

Please provide feedback and comments in ARIA practices issue #29:
https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/issues/29


For reference, this new grid design pattern section replaces ARIA 1.0 design pattern sections for both "Grid" [3] and "Actionable, Sortable Column Header in a Grid" [4].

Matt King

References:

[1] ARIA 1.1 Grid Pattern
http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#grid


[2] APG 1.1 Issue #29 for grid pattern feedback:
https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/issues/29


[3] ARIA 1.0 design pattern text for Grid:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2016/WD-wai-aria-practices-1.1-20160317/#grid


[4] ARIA 1.0 design pattern text for Actionable, Sortable Column Header in a Grid:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2016/WD-wai-aria-practices-1.1-20160317/#sortablegrid