RE: aria-rowindex and aria-colindex

I think I’m misunderstanding the purpose of aria-colindex.

I thought it was to specify X Y coordinates like row3 cell7, but it looks like from this thread that aria-colindex is meant not to do this at all, but to simply specify the number of total columns in a row, is that correct?

If yes, this doesn’t match the functionality of aria-rowindex, which actually is a Y coordinate.


From: Alexander Surkov [mailto:surkov.alexander@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 9:51 AM
To: Joanmarie Diggs
Cc: Dominic Mazzoni; W3C WAI Protocols & Formats
Subject: Re: aria-rowindex and aria-colindex



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