Failure F46 for markup in layout tables doesn't taken into account role presentation or none

[mraccess77]

F46, "Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using th elements, caption elements, or non-empty summary attributes in layout tables" would seem to fail tables with markup even if role of presentation or none is present. Should this technique be updated to cover this situation?

[mbgower]

@mraccess77 I'm assuming your perspective is that it doesn't matter if any of these attributes are set; they are nullified by role="presentation" and therefore irrelevant?

Do you have preference for how you'd like to tackle this?

For example, the title is

F46: Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using th elements, caption elements, or non-empty summary attributes in layout tables

Would changing the title wording from "using" to "exposing" in the title be in line with how you want this interpreted, or do you have another approach in mind? I'm trying to ascertain if the title change, along with supporting tweaks to the wording and the test, is the best solution.

[mraccess77]

I guess we first need to agree if a layout table with no th, summary, caption, or other markup but without role presentation would pass WCAG. If we think that would still pass as it did before the days of ARIA then we should probably write it something like

"Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using th elements, caption elements, or non-empty summary attributes in layout tables not marked as presentational.

Then we could just add a check for the role and some examples of using role presentation/none.

[mbgower]

That sounds good. Are you able to create a PR with some or all of those changes?

[patrickhlauke]

not sure i'd agree with the need to update the failure example. these examples are not comprehensive and can't cover any possible extra thing authors may be doing (i mean at an extreme, most failure techniques would actually pass if the author wrapped the whole thing in some aria-hidden="true" or similar?)

[mraccess77]

@patrickhlauke In this case though, the way to make a layout table not communicate structure is to use role presentation/none - so the update is directly related to the technique approach. I'd also be good with not focusing so much on the specific named roles but the marking of presentational (however that is done).

[mraccess77]

I created a pull request to cover some of what I discussed. https://github.com/w3c/wcag/pull/3566

[bruce-usab]

This issue discussed on WCAG2 issues calls 1/5 and 1/12.