Regression from earlier version, aria-colindex missing from table

[pascal-pfeiffer]

Wave SDK Version, OS

Wave 1.3.4

Actual behavior

Somewhere between v1.0.2 and 1.3.4 the aria-colindex for tables was dropped. This information was especially helpful for automated UI testing, so it would be great to get it back.

v1.0.2

v1.3.4:

Expected behavior

aria-colindex being set for tables

[marek-mihok]

It was removed by FluentUI in version 8.52.1 according to its CHANGELOG:

{
      "date": "Tue, 01 Feb 2022 07:26:25 GMT",
      "tag": "@fluentui/react_v8.52.1",
      "version": "8.52.1",
      "comments": {
        "patch": [
          {
            "author": "[email protected]",
            "package": "@fluentui/react",
            "commit": "c4912723213bb1a15b4af2f6c7962bc32064bf4a",
            "comment": "remove aria-colindex from DetailsList columns by default, fix aria-label and aria-description on column headers"
          },
...

Looking to docs it does not seem to be necessary:
If all of the columns are present in the DOM, including aria-colindex is not necessary as user agents can calculate the column index of each cell or gridcell. However, if any of the columns are left out of the DOM at any time, use aria-colindex to indicate the column of each cell or gridcell with respect to the full table.

The Wave regression lies in #2201 where we updated Fluent version from 8.49.0 to 8.58.0

Looking to the Fluent commit, there is a new data-item-key property, but it only adresses column headers.

Is there any other way how you could adjust your tests? E.g. by querying the children of ms-DetailsRow-fields component?

UPDATE:
There is a new data-automation-key for cells:

[pascal-pfeiffer]

Thank you @marek-mihok for all the digging and the great solution!
Indeed, we can use data-automation-key for these tests. Makes sense to deprecate an index in favor for an easy understandable key.