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Re: Proper Way to Render Table for Reading Cells

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jul 7, 2015 7:30AM

> I'd like to either use hotkeys within the web browser using JavaScript
> or accept any other recommendations on replicating the functionality
> for disabled folks to be able to "select" a table row to perform
> actions after the fact.

Remember that the page/script won't know where the virtual/browser cursor is. So you will actually have to provide some sort of focusable mechanism as _mallory indicates even if you create hotkeys unless the hotkeys are hard coded to specific rows. In addition, JAWS is different from other screen readers like NVDA and Window-Eyes that it only focuses controls like links on tab while other screen readers will focus them when you reach them via arrow keys in browse mode.

Jonathan

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Jonathan Avila 
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group 
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Phone 703.637.8957  
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of _mallory
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 6:24 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Proper Way to Render Table for Reading Cells

On Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 02:58:39PM -0400, Christopher Koeber wrote:
> Hey,
> Also, not sure if anyone can answer the question about cell "editing",
> I'd like to either use hotkeys within the web browser using JavaScript
> or accept any other recommendations on replicating the functionality
> for disabled folks to be able to "select" a table row to perform
> actions after the fact.

How are these selectable in the first place? contenteditable?

> For non-disabled users they can simply select a table row with a
> mouse; the table row then has specific classes added for each cell.

You can be non-disabled and still have no good mouse. Can you make the cells be focusable? Or the table itself and once focussed, listen for arrow keys or whatever spreadsheet people tend to use to move "focus" around cells. You could then either contenteditable+real focus or onfocus switch the cell info for a real input with current cell info as the current value.
Since switching around DOM stuff is slow, probably waiting for someone to hit ENTER would be better to switch in an input/textarea.

_mallory