Should the 'row' role really be necessary for parents of 'gridcell' and other cell role elements?

[turjmner8]

Discussed in #2128

^{Originally posted by turjmner8 February 22, 2024}
In general, would it be possible to remove the requirement for role 'gridcell' elements to be contained within role 'row' elements in a future spec? Newer DOM approaches like CSS grid are available to simplify the construction of grid structures that do not really support having a row-like element wrap all the given 'cell' elements of a logical row. Additionally, it's not quite clear to me how someone would be able to construct a 'row' role compliant grid for cases where cells span multiple rows without using TR elements, which introduces other sizing issues that do not exist when using more modern DIV / CSS strategies.

It seems like aria-rowindex, aria-colindex, etc... on 'gridcell' role elements themselves should be enough to convey what logical row and column a given 'gridcell' element belongs to even if its parent was a 'grid' role element rather than an additional 'row' role element.

I may be missing some nuance here, but the only thing that seems a little unclear would be not being able to set aria-selected on the containing 'row' element if row selection is supported. In general, it also feels like selections when dealing with tables/grids could also benefit from some enhancements though (how to tell if a row vs column vs individual cell is selected for example). Specifying aria-selected on 'row' role elements vs 'gridcell' role elements does not seem to make much of a difference in current screen reader impls (NVDA, JAWS, voiceover, etc...)

Thanks for any feedback / info here.

[turjmner8]

I'm wondering if there could be any additional input on this for future consideration. There was some feedback in the discussion I posted initially, though not much activity after that.

Developing higher complexity grid implementations is very difficult to make accessible with the current DOM restrictions that enforce a containing 'row' element for all cells in a logical row. In addition to the comments above, I have requirements where visible row header cells also need their own horizontally scrollable region, and that is impossible to implement in a 'grid' role due to all cells within a given logical row needing to be children of a single 'row' element.

[scottaohara]

re-posting the related issues that this touches on - #1138 and my issue that we closed as duplicate #1853

another related issue to consider with this #1386

and this PR might actually counter balance the mentioned gap of not being able to select a row of cells - if a row were not to exist - #2390

All that said - is setting a row to display: contents also a way to mitigate an issues between needing to use a role=row and wanting more styling flexibility with CSS's grid layout? My understanding is that it could help here... but i also admittedly have avoided using that display value due to previous a11y issues

[turjmner8]

All that said - is setting a row to display: contents also a way to mitigate an issues between needing to use a role=row and wanting more styling flexibility with CSS's grid layout? My understanding is that it could help here... but i also admittedly have avoided using that display value due to previous a11y issues

Oh, that is an interesting idea - I can certainly try out some proof of concepts in that area and will report back on how it goes.

[turjmner8]

Sorry for the accidental close - reopened