RE: Using Frames - what problems do screen readers have?

The problem that screen reader users face is that they can't identify each
frame and navigate between them efficiently if they are not coded properly.
In addition to what Juan mentioned, I would also add a meaningful <TITLE> to
the individual frame pages (make it identical to the TITLE in the frameset).
This is because Jaws and Window-Eyes for example look at frames in a
slightly different way. This process ensures that both users have the same
experience when navigating the site.
The screen reader users can pull up a list of frames and navigate to the one
they want or simply browse through the frames one after the other by hitting
the m key (Jaws) or Ctrl+Tab (W-E).  Otherwise, they can just navigate the
page linearly and every time they reach a frame the screen reader will alert
them (frame "title" start) and then alert them again when they reach the end
of it (frame "title" end).

Ziad Gemayel
Lighthouse International
Accessibility Consulting and Testing Solutions (ACTS) unit


-----Original Message-----
From: Juan Ulloa [mailto:julloa@bcc.ctc.edu]
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 1:39 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Using Frames - what problems do screen readers have?



...Regarding frames, it is my understanding that all you need to do to make
the frameset accessible is to use the title attribute on the frameset for
each frame.  But I have no idea how screen readers interpret this.


<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN">

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title of Your Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<FRAMESET cols="10%, 90%"
TITLE="Our library of electronic documents"> 
<FRAME SRC="nav.html" title="Navigation bar"> 
<FRAME SRC="doc.html" title="Documents">

</FRAMESET>
 

  Juan C. Ulloa
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Received on Monday, 17 November 2003 14:07:59 UTC