Description
I was looking over the Table header cell has assigned cells rule to share it with AG, but looking over it again I'm not so sure this is ready. The main issue is of this rule using HTML's "assigned headings" definition.
First up, this rule assumed aria-owns isn't used to create structure in the tree. The application relies on the flat tree rather than the accessibility tree to decide whether a headercell is in a table/grid.
The assigned headings algorithm itself assumed its only ever applied to th / td elements inside a table element. It too doesn't account for aria-owns. It uses scope
and headers
attributes as though those are supported (which they may not be on an element with an explicit role).
It may very well be that the HTML 5 algorithm with some modifications can be made to work for tables built with ARIA, but someone would actually need to do that. Right now the rule as written would for example allow the headers
attribute to be used on <div role="cell">
, which doesn't seem right. Nor do I think the rule should ignore the possibility of people using aria-owns inside tables.