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