Data Grid - Accessibility

The Data Grid has complete accessibility support, including built-in keyboard navigation that follows international standards.

Guidelines

The most commonly encountered conformance guidelines for accessibility are:

Globally accepted standard: WCAG
US:
- ADA - US Department of Justice
- Section 508 - US federal agencies
Europe: EAA (European Accessibility Act)

WCAG 2.1 has three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA. Level AA meets the most commonly encountered conformance guidelines. This is the most common target for organizations so what we aims to support very well.

The WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices provide valuable information on how to optimize the accessibility of a data grid.

Density

You can change the density of the rows and the column header.

Density selector

To enable the density selector, create a toolbar containing the GridToolbarDensitySelector component and apply it using the toolbar property in the Data Grid's slots prop. The user can then change the density of the Data Grid by using the density selector from the toolbar, as the following demo illustrates:

<DataGrid
  {...data}
  slots={{
    toolbar: CustomToolbar,
  }}
/>

<DataGrid
  {...data}
  slots={{
    toolbar: CustomToolbar,
  }}
/>

Press Enter to start editing

To hide the density selector, add the disableDensitySelector prop to the Data Grid.

Density prop

Set the vertical density of the Data Grid using the density prop. This prop applies the values determined by the rowHeight and columnHeaderHeight props, if supplied. The user can override this setting with the optional toolbar density selector.

The following demo shows a Data Grid with the default density set to compact:

<DataGrid
  {...data}
  density="compact"
  slots={{
    toolbar: CustomToolbar,
  }}
/>

<DataGrid
  {...data}
  density="compact"
  slots={{
    toolbar: CustomToolbar,
  }}
/>

Press Enter to start editing

The Data Grid listens for keyboard interactions from the user and emits events in response to key presses within cells.

Tab sequence

According to WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices, only one of the focusable elements contained by a composite widget should be included in the page tab sequence. For an element to be included in the tab sequence, it needs to have a tabIndex value of zero or greater.

When a user focuses on a Data Grid cell, the first inner element with tabIndex={0} receives the focus. If there is no element with tabIndex={0}, the focus is set on the cell itself.

The two Data Grids below illustrate how the user experience is impacted by improper management of the page tab sequence, making it difficult to navigate through the data set:

Without focus management

Correct focus management

If you customize cell rendering with the renderCell method, you become responsible for removing focusable elements from the page tab sequence. Use the tabIndex prop passed to the renderCell params to determine if the rendered cell has focus and if, as a result, the inner elements should be removed from the tab sequence:

renderCell: (params) => (
  <div>
    <Link tabIndex={params.tabIndex} href="/#">
      more info
    </Link>
  </div>
);

The following key assignments apply to Windows and Linux users.

On macOS:

replace Ctrl with ⌘ Command
replace Alt with ⌥ Option

Keys	Description
`Arrow Left`	Navigate between cell elements
`Arrow Bottom`	Navigate between cell elements
`Arrow Right`	Navigate between cell elements
`Arrow Up`	Navigate between cell elements
`Home`	Navigate to the first cell of the current row
`End`	Navigate to the last cell of the current row
`Ctrl+Home`	Navigate to the first cell of the first row
`Ctrl+End`	Navigate to the last cell of the last row
`Space`	Navigate to the next scrollable page
`Page Up`	Navigate to the previous scrollable page
`Page Down`	Navigate to the next scrollable page
`Space`	Toggle row children expansion when grouping cell is focused

Selection

Keys	Description
`Shift+Space`	Select the current row
`Shift+Arrow Up/Down`	Select the current row and the row above or below
`Shift`+ Click on cell	Select the range of rows between the first and the last clicked rows
`Ctrl+A`	Select all rows
`Ctrl+C`	Copy the currently selected rows
`Ctrl`+ Click on cell	Enable multi-selection
`Ctrl`+ Click on a selected row	Deselect the row

Sorting

Keys	Description
`Ctrl`+ Click on header	Enable multi-sorting
`Shift`+ Click on header	Enable multi-sorting
`Shift+Enter`	Enable multi-sorting when column header is focused
`Enter`	Sort column when column header is focused
`Ctrl+Enter`	Open column menu when column header is focused

Group and pivot

Keys	Description
`Ctrl+Enter`	Toggle the detail panel of a row