IFRAME Accessibility Inquiry

what is the current state of accessibility of IFRAME?  what are
the outstanding accessibility problems inherit to IFRAME, or 
have they been mitigated?

if, for example, one has a document embedded in an IFRAME which 
has access keys defined for it, will the embedded document's UI 
controls take precedence when the focus is in the IFRAME?  what 
about conflicts between embedded UI controls and UI controls in 
host documents?  what if a tabindex value has been defined for 
the IFRAME, and the document in the IFRAME has its own tabindex
order?

the basic question is: how do the 2 documents interact and what 
can we do to standardize this interaction?  can we harmonize 
our efforts with OpenAjax's support for iFrames?

so, what are the problems with IFRAME today?  here is a very 
rough thumbnail:

1. tension between global and scopeable UI controls (accesskey, 
   tabindex, etc.)

2. horizontal and vertical scrolling impose an undue burden for 
   several user groups;

3. one can't resize an IFRAME; one can only use the UA's scaling 
   mechanism, which is crude/gross at best;

4. ARIA will help with IFRAME accessibility, yes, but what is still 
   lacking in non-ARIA enabled technology, to support IFRAME 
   accessibly?

References:
IFRAME in HTML4.01/XHTML1.0:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present/frames.html#edef-IFRAME

IFRAME in OpenAjax: 
http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/OpenAjax_Hub_1.1_Roadmap#Leveraging_IFRAMEs_for_mashup_security

thank you, gregory
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             Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
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Received on Wednesday, 18 June 2008 08:11:56 UTC