Web Accessibility

Frames: Provide a Frame Title.

Checkpoint 12.1 [Priority 1] Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation.

For visually enabled users, frames may organize a page into different zones. For non-visual users, relationships between the content in frames (e.g., one frame has a table of contents, another the contents themselves) must be conveyed through other means.

Frames as implemented today (with the FRAMESET, FRAME, and IFRAME elements) are problematic for several reasons:

1. Without scripting, they tend to break the "previous page" functionality offered by browsers.

2. It is impossible to refer to the "current state" of a frameset with a URI; once a frameset changes contents, the original URI no longer applies.

3. Opening a frame in a new browser window can disorient or simply annoy users.

Tips:

• Provide a title for each frame using the "title" attribute.
• Describe frame relationships: Describe the purpose of frames and how frames relate to each other if it is not obvious by frame titles alone.

• Content developers must provide text equivalents of frames so that their contents and the relationships between frames make sense. Note that as the contents of a frame change, so must change any description. This is not possible if an IMG is inserted directly into a frame. Thus, content developers should always make the source ("src") of a frame an HTML file. Images may be inserted into the HTML file and their text alternatives will evolve correctly.