WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

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

for

From: David Engebretson Jr.
Date: Jul 4, 2022 7:17PM

I agree that documentation is going to be really important. Would that documentation be best in the table legend or in a paragraph before the table?

I think defining a shortcut key, like Glen suggests, could add development overhead that could be avoided as user agents and assistive technologies develop over the years ahead. Too many possibilities for key conflicts in the future.

I, personally, like the idea of making a really descriptive skip link to the data cell that is visually highlighted. I still haven't seen any code from Geethavani.Shamanna so I don't have any context to the problem. I'm just assuming that there is one highlighted data cell the user should obtain focus to. All assumptions I've made from their original email.

Speaking of focus: could the user find focus in that cell with a tabindex set on that data cell? Then an aria-label for screen readers and plenty of other visual goodies for visually oriented folks using assistive technologies other than screen readers and/or keyboard only users of course. I guess that, since you'll need to have an ID for the skip link, you won't need to modify the tab order with tabindex. Probably better that way... but, if all of the data cells are hyperlinks innately then maybe tabindex is the way to go. Hmmm.

Interesting problem. I look forward to hearing more (and seeing some example code) from Geethavani.Shamanna!
David