[whatwg] ARIA semantics of implied rows

Hi WHATWG,

ยง4.9.12 Processing model (
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/tables.html#processing-model-3 )
currently states:

A *row* is a complete set of slots from x=0 to x=x_width-1, for a
> particular value of y. Rows usually correspond to tr elements, though a row
> group can have some implied rows at the end in some cases involving cells
> spanning multiple rows.
>

I am thinking that "implied rows" refers to cases such as:

<table id="theTable" border="1">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td rowspan="10" colspan="3">These are the first 10 rows.</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>Row 11, Column 1</td>
      <td>Row 11, Column 2</td>
      <td>Row 11, Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Row 12, Column 1</td>
      <td>Row 12, Column 2</td>
      <td>Row 12, Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Row 13, Column 1</td>
      <td>Row 13, Column 2</td>
      <td>Row 13, Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Row 14, Column 1</td>
      <td>Row 14, Column 2</td>
      <td>Row 14, Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Row 15, Column 1</td>
      <td>Row 15, Column 2</td>
      <td>Row 15, Column 3</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

.. where because the first row group has a TD spanning 10 rows but only one
TR, there are 9 implied rows in that row group.

As specified by WAI-ARIA 1.0:

The HTML Working Group is incorporating WAI-ARIA into HTML 5. Official
> support for WAI-ARIA in HTML will be provided in that specification. This
> DTD is made available only as a bridging solution for applications
> requiring DTD validation but not using HTML 5.
>

http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/appendices#html_dtd

One issue is that the ARIA semantics for "implied rows" are not defined.

Currently, browsers that I have tested (Chrome 37.0.2062.124, Firefox
32.0.3, Safari 7.1, and Internet Explorer 11) only expose 6 rows for the
example listed above.  In order to get all 15 rows exposed to assistive
technologies, I need to insert empty TR elements for the implied rows.

It would be very useful if implied rows were exposed implicitly, using the
same role as the row containing the anchor slot of the first cell in the
implied row.

Sincerely,

Daniel Trebbien

Received on Friday, 26 September 2014 18:00:27 UTC