[Deque Ramp PE Beta] Framesets

From: Terence de Giere <tdegiere@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: deque-rpebeta@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 16:31:52 -0400
Framesets


Ramp PE seemed to handle frames OK. I recall that SSB Technologies' 
InFocus recommended a NOFRAMES section in 508 mode even though it is not 
specified in the Section 508 rules. One problem with the Section 508 
rules is it seems directed to Federal employees rather than the Web at 
large, and on the Web at large there is more likely to be a wider range 
of older technologies being used, although browsers that do not support 
frames in some way are very rare these days.

It could be suggested that a NOFRAMES section be added for 508, even 
though it is not legally required. Another couple general suggestions 
for frames are:

1. The frame NAME (not the required TITLE attribute) also be 
human-readable because some technologies do not read the TITLE but do 
read the NAME attribute. Names like frame1 or xyz1123 don't work well 
for telling a user what kind of content is in the frame. It may not 
always be necessary to read the longdesc file if it is available if the 
name and title attributes are clear. The name attribute cannot have spaces.

2. It is not clear from the remediation instructions that the frame 
description refers to the LONGDESC attribute which is a link to a 
description file. As this release is aimed at students, I have observed 
that persons unfamiliar with accessibility have often incorrectly put 
the description itself in the LONGDESC attribute; and I made the same 
mistake the first time I did this many years ago.

While this is properly explained in the c010108.html file linked from 
the summary of violations page, just saying "Missing longdesc 
description file for Frame" instead of just "Missing description for 
Frame" in the summary line provides more useful feedback immediately. 
Ramp PE does seem to check for valid relative or absolute links here. It 
also tagged my mistakenly putting in a description instead of a URL as 
an error. It did not accept longdesc="" or longdesc=" ". If the URL was 
there *but the file it referred to was not*, Ramp PE beta mistakenly 
gave an OK, and did not report an error, assuming if the filename was 
there so was the file it referred to (I renamed the longdesc file to 
see what would happen).

Ramp handled framesets very well. Note that only the W3C HTML 4.0/4.01 
Frameset DTD, and the XHTML 1.0 Frameset DTDs support frames of all the 
official HTML specifications (HTML versions 2.0, 3.2, 4.0/4.01, ISO 
15445:2000 HTML, XHTML 1.0, XHTML Basic, XHTML 1.1). This becomes 
important if WCAG Priority 2 or 3 is to be implemented. All HTML DTDs 
for pages that display in frames except for HTML 4.0/4.01 Transitional 
and XHTML 1.0 Loose do not support the TARGET attribute necessary to 
display pages in frames when accessed from a link.
[Deque Ramp PE Beta] Framesets

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