RE: Regarding selected cells within a static data table

If I understand Matt's position correctly, which is in line with my own initial reaction, the tabular structure should be assigned a "grid" role even if the controls for selecting cells occur elsewhere in the interface (i.e., outside the "table").

While this appears reasonable on first inspection, I would be interested in more details of the use cases.

From: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2018 12:33 PM
To: 'James Nurthen' <nurthen@adobe.com>; 'Bryan Garaventa' <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>; 'ARIA Working Group' <public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: RE: Regarding selected cells within a static data table

Selected is specifically a widget state; it has nothing to do with static elements. That is how it is represented in accessibility APIs.

What does it mean to say a cell is selected in a static table? How do you change selection if the table is static? I think there is a confusion of concepts here.

We should not consider supporting aria-selected on elements that are not selectable.

Perhaps some more detail about the scenario could shed some light on how to represent the UI for assistive technologies.

Matt

From: James Nurthen [mailto:nurthen@adobe.com]
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2018 9:18 AM
To: Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>>; ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org<mailto:public-aria@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Regarding selected cells within a static data table

Can I clarify 1 point. Is this intended to allow a user to make a selection or is it only intended to indicate what is selected (as the result of another process)


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From: Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2018 8:54:22 AM
To: ARIA Working Group
Subject: Regarding selected cells within a static data table

Hi,
This came up last week, and seems to indicate a missing area in what we have available in either aria-current or aria-selected, but I'm not sure which.

The scenario is a static data table where a series of situations are possible, (1) all cells in a column are highlighted as being selected, (2) all cells in a row are highlighted as being selected, or (3) any number of random cells within the data table are highlighted as being selected.

I was asked if aria-current could be used for this, but this does not actually fit because this only deals with one current item in a collection.

Similarly, the aria-selected attribute won't work because it is not supported on role="cell".

Also, it is invalid to add role="grid" to the construct just to expose aria-selected because this is a static data table and is not an interactive widget.

So, since nothing is available to deal with this, it seems that it should be either handled by aria-current or aria-selected, even though at present it does not.

Would it be agreeable to extend aria-selected to be supported on role="cell"?

Or, would adding a token to aria-current be more agreeable such as aria-current="selected"?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,
Bryan



Bryan Garaventa
Accessibility Fellow
Level Access, Inc.
Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com<mailto:Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com>
415.624.2709 (o)
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