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Re: discrepancy with frames and 508 standards

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From: John Foliot - bytown internet
Date: Feb 15, 2002 5:13AM

Chris,

I believe you may be mistaken in that the W3C did not write the Section 508
guidelines, but rather that Section 508 uses the Priority 1 checkpoints of
the W3C's WAI (?)

While WAI does specify that Frames should be Titled (Priority 1 - 12.1), and
further that you should also describe the purpose of the fames and how they
relate to each other (Priority 2 - 12.2 - not part of 508), one should
remember that these are W3C guidelines and not standards. Software
manufacturers should be making (or at least attempting to make) their
applications behave appropriately, but are under no obligation to do so.
Jaws is a screen text reader, not a speech browser, and so the developers
are under no obligation to make their software "behave" in any way in direct
relationship to web content delivery. Here in Canada, the Federal
regulations regarding the development of Federal web site specifically
forbid the use of Frames as a primary means of content deliver, due in large
part to the fact that the predominant assistive technologies cannot deal
with them properly. So while you may in fact have technically compliant
Framesets, that in itself is no guarantee that visually impaired users will
be able to access them; you get the technical marks but miss the spirit.
Sorry.

As far as I know, Frames are simply not "accessible friendly". I might
suggest that much of the functionality afforded developers through the use
of Frames may also be achieved through server side includes (using any
number of technologies)... perhaps a re-think along those lines will resolve
the issue?

Good Luck

John Foliot
Bytown Internet
Ottawa, Ontario


>
> Date: 14 Feb 2002 13:53:25 -0600
> From: Chris Keller < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: discrepancy with frames and 508 standards
>
> I have heard and read many times that websites in frames comply
> with the W3C
> 508 guidelines. However, we had a blind student, CJ, test our
> courses which
> are using frames with his screen reader, Jaws (version 4.0, I
> believe), and
> he could not access our courses. We are naming our frames and
> can't figure
> out why the student can't access our courses. We have done our own tests
> and validate CJ's findings that our frames setup is inaccessible with his
> Jaws software. He gave a presentation to our 20 full time employees and
> adamantly argued that frame sites are inaccessible and that we
> should design
> in tables. Here is an example course:
> http://ce.byu.edu/courses/univ/488025350004/public/start.htm
>
> Could anyone please address this discrepancy or give us
> suggestions? Thank
> you.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Chris Keller
> Quality Assurance Supervisor
> BYU Center for Instructional Design
> (801) 378-7686 office
>
>
>
>



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