Re: the title and name tags for frames (migration)

At 10:51 AM 2000-09-25 -0400, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Claus,
>
>Having only a good name attribute will owrk for Jaws, but the HTML
>specification provides the title attribute on almost all elements (including
>frame and frameset). The title attribute is designed for a human-readable
>explanation of what an element does - the name attribute on a frame is a
>machine-readable one.
>

AG::

The situation is more complicated that this.  The 'name' attribute was
there first, so it is not fair to say that implementations which display
the 'name' attribute are not "good implementation."  It is also bad format
design to tell the machine one thing and the user something else.  

So there needs to be a more graceful migration strategy defined than that.

>So using only the name does not support good implementation. But using a good
>name and a good title does not create a problem, so it is better to do
>both.

Agreed.  On the author side this is the only safe approach at present.  Do
both.  Similarly for areas in MAPs, IIRC.

This kind of migration problem is evident in variations in the
implementation of ALT and TITLE in the past, and will be far more common if
we try to reform HTML at all in the XHTML 2.0 and later releases.

Al

>
>The longdesc attribute is similar - at the moment most tools do not support
>it, so it is necessary to use something like a d-link as well. But it is
>important to use the specification, so that we can say to software developers
>"there is content out there trying to do the right thing, and you should
>support that".
>
>(Actually I believe there is another Danish speech system at least, and
>it may be that there are also danish voices available for emacspeak using
>Mbrola or festival. Unless you support the specification as well as "what
>works in a piece of software", there is no encouragement for developers to do
>better at making tools that support the specifications.)
>
>cheers
>
>Charles McCN
>
>On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, Claus Thøgersen wrote:
>
>  Hi,
>  
>  During a rewrite of the Danish guidelines for creating accessable web
pages,
>  made by the Statens Infomation, the agency that is responsible for the
>  Danish national information policies, we have found problems with the WAC
>  guideline concerning the use of the title tag used to identify frames.
>  
>  In Denmark the only screenreader for blind is JAWS for Windos. We have
found
>  that JFW does not recognize the title  tag when used on frames but it does
>  recognize the name tag. So we started out discussion weather we should
>  follow JFW or the WAI guidelines. One of the members in the group has
>  examined the html 4.01 specification and claims that there is no reference
>  to the title tag at all. Is there a reason why the title tag has been
>  preferred over the name tag when using frames? And will we degrade other
>  access issues if we stick to the html 4.01 and recommend the use of the
name
>  tag when designing pages with frames?
>  
>  Regards
>  
>  Claus Thoegersen
>  Center for Blind and Visually Impaired Students
>  University of Aarhus
>  DK-8000 Aarhus C
>  Denmark
>  Phone +(45) 8942 23 71.
>  Email scsct@mail.hum.au.dk
>  
>  
>  
>
>-- 
>Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
>Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
>September - November 2000: 
>W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France
>

Received on Monday, 25 September 2000 11:14:13 UTC