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Re: Using Aria within a table to indicate that a cell is highlighted

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From: Kevin Prince
Date: Jul 4, 2022 7:10PM

Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using structural markup in a way that does not represent relationships in the content
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/failures/F43.html
"a failure that occurs when structural markup is used to achieve a presentational effect, but indicates relationships that do not exist in the content. This is disorienting to users who are depending on those relationships to navigate the content or to understand the relationship of one piece of the content to another."

Usually you see it where heading is used to make text 'appear' differently - this is almost exactly that.

I concur that creating a shortcut key for the presentation would do it. If using the hidden text option then a screenreader (or anyone else) can search for that text. Slightly more complex/advanced would be to change the font as well as highlight then a screen reader can look for instances of xyz font.

I prefer the hidden text to be visible and then that serves both the visual and screen reader usage. For example a highlighted cell could include *** , if it's a static output then that would be easy: if the tabkle is a dynamic one e.g. updating periodically then the algorithm that highlights needs to also add in any text and format changes

All the best

Kevin
Kevin Prince
Product Accessibility & Usability Consultant