iFrame titles - are they needed?

All,
I was having a discussion about iframes and SC 2.4.2 Page Titled (https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#page-titled) and 4.1.2 Name Role Value (https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#name-role-value).

My recollection from past discussions is that a web page with an iframe that is used to deliver an advertisement or section of content requires a title for the parent page (of course) but that the iframe is not a web page, it is an embedded resource in the parent web page, so the page title requirement doesn’t apply.

I see that the ACT TF is working on a rule that indicates that the iframe requires an accessible name (https://act-rules.github.io/rules/cae760) which seems to say that the iframe is a user interface component. My discussion recently was on this point, where the question was whether an iframe is perceived by users as a “single control for a distinct function”.

It seems that an iframe carries content which may or may not have interactive controls within it. I know that Firefox will set the focus on the iframe element, but there is no interaction on that element. For Firefox this is the opportunity to communicate any accessible name for the iframe, but I don’t believe that other browsers behave the same way – they don’t focus the frame so the name is not impactful there.

We have struggled with what is the right accessible name to provide for an iframe, especially for inline content that is not differentiable as different from other content to the user, the iframe is essentially a transparent wrapper or delivery mechanism. We can put aria-label=”inline content” if we just want to pass the SC and avoid rule-based failures, or we can put role=”presentation” to stop the rule failure (in axe) even though role=”presentation” doesn’t change what is communicated by the accessibility API.

It seems to me that an iframe is not a UIC, because in most browsers it is not perceived as a single control, and in Firefox where it may be perceived as a single control there is never a distinct function.

What do others think?

Definition of User Interface Component:
user interface component
a part of the content that is perceived by users as a single control for a distinct function
Definition of web page:
web page

a non-embedded resource obtained from a single URI using HTTP plus any other resources that are used in the rendering or intended to be rendered together with it by a user agent<https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/page-titled#dfn-user-agent>



Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Head of Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk