Re: noframes & Content Guidelines

Reposted to w3c-wai-gl@w3.org for the WCAG group to consider. Please followup
there rather than IG.

Paul,

The main requirement for noframes is in checkpoint 6.5. This is Priority 2
since in most user agents now it is opossible to access frames, at least to
the extent of choosing between them. In other words, the working group felt
that in general a meaningful title and name were more important for access to
frames than a noframes element with useful content.

One of the problems with a prioritised set of guidelines is that people are
prepared to do what is essential, and then leave out the rest. In other
words, it is accepted by some people as good enough if it is ont impossible
to participate, but merely very difficult. I'm not sure that changing that
could be done by the working group, and in the long riun i feel that there is
value in prioritising to a certain extent, since meeting all the Priority 3
checkpoints may not be as valuable as meeting 2 or three of the P1
checkpoints. Of course I would hope that people endeavour to make triple-A
conformance.

Cheers

Charles McCN

On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Paul Booth wrote:

  Hi there,
  
  I've recently been running bobby over a few sites for people and explaining
  the results to them.
  
  I noticed that when run over a site with frames bobby comes up with the
  guideline: "Ensure that pages are readable and usable without frames."
  
  I cant find anywhere in the WAI Web Content Checklist that actually says
  this however.
  http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist.html
  
  "Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation." is in
  there as is, "Describe the purpose of frames and how frames relate to each
  other if it is not obvious by frame titles alone. "
  
  Although I did stagger on it somehow (through the mass of links and pages
  you get from the checklist) in http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/ as
  point 4.10.3
  
  On further inspection, I guess its covered in part in checkpoint 1.1, but I
  cant find anything that specifically mentions "noframes" in that part of the
  techniques document.  I know space is a premium, but shouldn't some of these
  points be given a bit more emphasis?
  
  I could see a potential problem that someone who has used frames could just
  look under the "And if you use frames (Priority 1)" heading in the checklist
  and think "well my frames all have titles so I'm ok!"
  
  Perhaps I'm missing something - I find navigating the techniques document
  from the checklist quite difficult.
  
  Actually, this makes me think of another question:  Is it the case that
  <noframes> isn't considered as important as it used to be? (hence why its
  not specifically mentioned in the checklist?)  I appreciate that most
  browsers cope with them by letting the user select the individual frames in
  the frameset...  (In which case, is it bobby thats a bit out of sync?)
  
  ....Or perhaps I've just been working too late (again).
  
  - Paul
  
  --
  Paul Booth, Project Officer, DISinHE Office.
  The UK's national centre for Disability and Information Systems in Higher
  Education,
  Department of Applied Computing, University of Dundee, Scotland
  w:  http://www.disinhe.ac.uk/     t: 01382 345050      f: 01382 345509
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
21 Mitchell Street, Footscray, VIC 3011,  Australia

Received on Sunday, 16 January 2000 13:05:05 UTC