WAI-ARIA 1.1: Cell and gridcell

[michael-n-cooper]

Filed at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2015JulSep/0003.html by Sailesh Panchang [email protected]

The description of gridcell includes quite a few references to "cell". After all, a gridcell is a cell and is contained within a row.
A cell can belong to a table or grid or treegrid and be editable or not depending on the parent container.
This will also be in line with The specs that have a single columnheader and rowheader role and not one pair for role=table and one pair for role=grid.
Instead of retaining role=gridcell, consider deprecating "gridcell and defining "cell" with the same description used for gridcell.
Deprecating it will give a clear signal to makers of user agents / AT and in the interim, validators can flag "warning" for role=gridcell.
Makers of user agents / At will need to be urged to implement this change once ARIA 1.1 becomes a recommendation.
Defining two roles with identical functionality will make it difficult for makers of user agent / AT. Some will support it sooner than later and developers will need to cope with this problem.
Thanks,
Sailesh Panchang

[asurkov]

I agree that gridcell should be deprecated. Iirc we had some discussion on
it, not sure if we reached an agreement that time.

On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 11:12 AM, michael-n-cooper [email protected]
wrote:

Filed at
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2015JulSep/0003.html
by Sailesh Panchang [email protected]

The description of gridcell includes quite a few references to "cell".
After all, a gridcell is a cell and is contained within a row.
A cell can belong to a table or grid or treegrid and be editable or not
depending on the parent container.
This will also be in line with The specs that have a single columnheader
and rowheader role and not one pair for role=table and one pair for
role=grid.
Instead of retaining role=gridcell, consider deprecating "gridcell and
defining "cell" with the same description used for gridcell.
Deprecating it will give a clear signal to makers of user agents / AT and
in the interim, validators can flag "warning" for role=gridcell.
Makers of user agents / At will need to be urged to implement this change
once ARIA 1.1 becomes a recommendation.
Defining two roles with identical functionality will make it difficult for
makers of user agent / AT. Some will support it sooner than later and
developers will need to cope with this problem.
Thanks,
Sailesh Panchang

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#79.

[michael-n-cooper]

Moving to ARIA 2.0. Don't expect to deprecate roles until then.

[mcking65]

See related issues #1008 and #1022.

[joanmarie]

Consensus from TPAC:

• First: Change implementations to treat cell inside grid as they do gridcell.
• Then: Make gridcell synonym for cell initially
• Finally: Deprecate gridcell

[scottaohara]

testing this today (webkit/gecko/chromium(msaa/ia2/uia), using cell instead of gridcell within a role=grid pattern seems to work just fine n' dandy.

consider per #2151

[scottaohara]

during the editor's meeting today we wondered if the trouble of deprecating was really worth the effort?

rather, could there instead be work here to clarify that authors may use cell or gridcell within the context of a grid - as browers will treat a cell as a gridcell in that context. we don't actually want to do away with the concept of a gridcell, so maybe this is a good first step forward in resolving this issue - and then if anyone does feel strongly about deprecation (e.g., implementors), then maybe they could be the ones to do the work to push the deprecation forward.

[spectranaut]

Discussed in the ARIA working group meeting today: https://www.w3.org/2024/05/16-aria-minutes#t05