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 8:01PM

Kevin, commenting on your email below: If you wrap a heading around the data cell that is highlighted you aren't, necessarily, changing the font size if you know how to change the CSS. With CSS you can make a heading level 3 look like paragraph text (or a heading level 1 if'n you want) without destroying the semantic presentation to the DOM. All the above is said in jest, though. I think the skip link idea is the best – accessible to all.



Regarding shortcuts on webpages: I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to add the development overhead of maintaining a shortcut if you can keep the DOM semantically valid so the user agent and the assistive technology innately knows what to do with the semantics of the HTML.



I think a skip link to the highlighted cell in the table would minimize engineering costs in the short term, and would avoid maintenance costs in the long term. A skip link to the highlighted cell might even help the webpage owners keep the customer support costs down if documentation in the table legend, or a paragraph before the table, were cognitively simple to understand.



I like the digital “food for thought”. Keep it up!

David



From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Kevin Prince
Sent: Monday, July 04, 2022 6:10 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] [EXTERNAL] Using Aria within a table to indicate that a cell is highlighted



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





Foster Moore


A Teranet Company






E <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> > <EMAIL REMOVED>


Christchurch


<http://www.fostermoore.com/>; fostermoore.com