WAI-ARIA 1.1: Cell and gridcell

The description of gridcell  includes quite a few references to "cell". After all, a gridcell is a cell and is contained within a row.
A cell can belong to a table or grid or treegrid and be editable or not depending on the parent container.
This will also be in line with The specs that have a single columnheader and rowheader  role and not one pair for role=table and one pair for role=grid.
Instead of retaining role=gridcell, consider deprecating "gridcell and  defining "cell" with the same description used for gridcell. 
Deprecating it will give a clear signal to makers of user agents / AT and in the interim, validators can flag "warning" for role=gridcell.
Makers of user agents / At will need to be urged to implement this change once ARIA 1.1 becomes a recommendation. 
Defining two roles with identical  functionality will make it difficult for makers of user agent / AT. Some will support it sooner than later and developers will need to cope with this problem.
Thanks,
Sailesh Panchang

Received on Thursday, 30 July 2015 18:17:25 UTC