[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 146239] AX: accessibles for focusable/interactive <tbody> elements or elements with ARIA role='rowgroup'

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146239

--- Comment #3 from Joseph Scheuhammer <clown at alum.mit.edu> ---
(In reply to comment #2)
> rowgroups should not be focusable. We added this to ARIA purely so that we
> could make the algorithm for presentational inheritance work. See
> #presentation: 
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/complete#presentation
> "Likewise, although an HTML table element does not have an implicit native
> semantic role corresponding directly to a WAI-ARIA role, the implicit native
> semantics of its thead/tbody/tfoot/tr/th/td descendants will also be
> removed, because the HTML specification indicates that these are required
> structural descendants of the table element."

The specification also says that rowgroup is to be used only in the context of a grid:
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/complete#rowgroup
"Authors MUST ensure elements with role rowgroup are contained in, or owned by, an element with the role grid."

An element with role="grid" is the opposite of an element with role="presentation".  If authors follow this aspect of the spec, rowgroups should only appear in an interactive context, and never in a presentational one.

> 
> The role mapping for "rowgroup" was explicitly defined as "no mapping" but
> unfortunately Alex didn't get the memo and added it to Firefox.
> 

I've discussed this with Alex.  His is a considered approach.  And, the other attendees of the AAPI meetings have moved away from the "not mapped" position.  All platforms, except AXAPI, now define mappings for rowgroup:
http://w3c.github.io/aria/core-aam/core-aam.html#role-map-rowgroup

The rationale is that if an element is focusable and can emit AAPI events, then it must have some representation in the accessibility tree.  Put another way, if the non-AT user can interact with the element, so can the AT user.  The price, exposing an accessible, doesn't seem that steep.

> ARIA 1.1 should be updated to make it clear that making a rowgroup focusable
> is an authoring error.

That is another way to resolve the situation. If that's what the group decides then ARIA 1.1 should go on to say that if an author desires to make a rowgroup focusable/clickable, they should not use the rowgroup role, but some other role.

Also, these recommendations would apply to the <tbody>, <thead>, and <tfoot> elements.  That is, if authors should not make rowgroup focusable, then likewise authors should not make <tbody>, <thead>, nor <tfoot> focusable.

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