FW: issue-606 and aria-colindex, aria-rowindex

I second this. Very useful for orientation in large data sets. When ARIA should be used also in business contexts this is definitively a reasonable extension.

It is in https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/actions/1293


Due date is November 11, 2014.


-          Stefan

From: Daniel Trebbien [mailto:dtrebbien@gmail.com]
Sent: Samstag, 11. Oktober 2014 21:25
To: wai-xtech@w3.org
Subject: issue-606 and aria-colindex, aria-rowindex

Hi,

I was wondering if there is an update on adding aria-colindex and aria-rowindex attributes to the gridcell and row roles?

aria-colindex and aria-rowindex were mentioned at a November 5, 2013 teleconference:
http://www.w3.org/2013/11/05-aapi-minutes.html#item03


.. and then two weeks later at a November 19, 2013 teleconference:
http://www.w3.org/2013/11/19-aapi-minutes.html#item01


The most recent discussion that I could find is from a May 5, 2014 teleconference:
http://www.w3.org/2014/05/05-aria-minutes.html#item03


These would be very useful additions for creating large AJAX-backed tables, where the data for rows are only downloaded by the web application when the user views them.  For example, the application might know that there are 150,000 total rows in a table, but the user is only viewing rows 1000 through 1020, so the application only has to download the data for those rows.

Because aria-colindex and aria-rowindex are not supported, the only solution is to try to use HTML rowspan and colspan attributes to make the table model match the data model.  However, browsers that I have tested (Chrome 37.0.2062.124, Firefox 32.0.3, Safari 7.1, and Internet Explorer 11), do not expose implied rows to the accessibility layer:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2014Sep/0092.html

In order to have the browser expose the correct number of rows, it is necessary to add an empty <tr> element for each of the implied rows (thus making all rows explicit).

Unfortunately, browsers start exhibiting performance issues with many rows:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=418360


If aria-colindex and aria-rowindex attributes were available, then these performance issues could be avoided.

Sincerely,

Daniel Trebbien