[TECHS] Longdesc in Frames

Hi There 

We have been looking at what the WCAG Techniques Document should do about
Longdesc in Frames.  On our Conference call last week, the consensus was
that "Longdesc for Frames" was not a very useful technique.  It does not
appear to be well supported.  None of us on the call could think of a real
live circumstance where the Longdesc for Frames have been used.  We suggest
not having techniques about longdesc for frames.  Are there any other
opinions out there about this?

I set up a little test page on
http://www.davidmacd.com/test/test_longdesc_and_title.htm 

Here are Michael's comments, (my experiments had similar results):

I just played with this a bit, thanks for putting it together. I found some
surprising results - did you find the same?

 

1. The offer "press enter to read long description" was made _after_ reading
the contents of the frame. Wouldn't you want to hear it _before_?

2. I got the offer to read the long description when navigating with the
arrow keys, but not with ctrl-tab. I usually use ctrl-tab to switch frames,
because it's quicker gratification.

3. As you mentioned, there were weird things about the long description
opening into a new window. The first time, a new window opens, then I
manually have to tell it to read the window. If I leave that window open,
switch back to the frameset window, and request the long description again,
something really interesting happens. JAWS announces "new window" and
automatically reads the long description file, <title>, contents, and all.

However, the system focus doesn't change - it's still on the frameset
document. If I were blind I wouldn't know that. There isn't any way to get
the JAWS focus back to the original window, except to alt-tab away and then
alt-tab back.

 

With all this, an especially in light of very poor UA implementation, I'm
left wondering what the value of longdesc for frame is. 

 

Michael

 

 

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