List table: Select %s shouldn't be a row header

[afercia]

See related #31654 and #26167.

In all the List Tables in the admin, the "Select %s" (where %s is the name of the Post, Attachment, Plugin, User, etc,) is used as row header:

<th scope="row" class="check-column">

This is not correct from a semantics and accessibility point of view for all the reasons mentioned in #31654. The row header should be the cell with the main object the table refers to: the Post title, the Plugin name, etc.

We could also consider to use the abbr attribute: ​http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/tabular-data.html#attr-th-abbr
that would be consistent with what is currently proposed in sortable column headers ticket

[afercia]

One more good reason to address this issue is that, when a post is locked and the lock icon appears, the icon has no label or text that can be announced so screen readers will read out the column header "Select All";

[abcd95]

rought implementation

[abcd95]

This is a rough implementation and a thought put into existence. This doesn't account for the styling and CSS ruleset changes. I want opinions on whether this is the right direction to move forward.

Other list tables, such as the Users list and multi-site tables, are yet to be updated. Additionally, the styling has been affected, which I will address in the subsequent commits.

The styles of the plugins list table and highly coupled, and removing padding on unselected rows is affecting other headers. Debugging deeper into this -

​https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/40799432-d840-45df-a424-ca097078949d

[joedolson]

Thanks for your work on this, @abcd95!

I think that the direction is valid, although I'm a little concerned that that row actions will pollute the name too much. That might need testing with users, to see if it's too annoying.

The excerpt is also in the name cell in extended view, and that could make it even worse.

[abcd95]

Replying to joedolson:

I think that the direction is valid, although I'm a little concerned that that row actions will pollute the name too much.

Thanks for the feedback, @joedolson

Regarding the concerns about row actions and excerpts "polluting" the name cell -
You're right that this warrants testing. The row actions are semantically related to the row item (title/name), so having them within the <th scope="row"> makes logical sense from an accessibility standpoint (I'm gonna defer to your judgement here tho). I also understand your concern about the verbosity.

Could we -

• Explore using aria-labelledby or aria-describedby to separate the core identification (title) from supplementary content (actions/excerpt)
• Consider moving the excerpt outside the <th> into a separate <td> in a new row (similar to how plugin descriptions work)

Looking forward to what other contributos have to say about this. Thanks for helping out with this one.