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Re: Title attribute for iframes

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 16, 2020 2:10AM

It's not that the client doesn't care. This is a contractual dispute over whether a developer built a website that is WCAG conformant.

Some people on this list only work in one context i.e. achieving the best level of accessibility they can for their employer. Others of us work in a variety of contexts. Sometimes a client wants us to help them achieve the highest possible level of accessibility. Other times we might be assessing a third party website on behalf of a client before they buy a system, in which case no remedial work will be possible - they just want to understand its conformance level. In this case we are acting as independent technical assessors to resolve a disagreement.

In some of these contexts the user experience and assistive technology behaviours are completely irrelevant. All that matters is whether a website conforms with what WCAG actually says, not what anyone thinks it should say. We have to put our personal opinions aside and base our decision on the facts, even if we don't like them.

The discussion that Patrick's email links to (https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/929) is interesting. With one exception, everyone is of the opinion that an<iframe> is not a "user interface component", which is also my view. The one dissenting view (http://www.davidmacd.com/blog/is-title-attribute-on-iframe-required-by-wcag.html) is a very poorly argued opinion that starts with the result he wants and works backwards to justify it.

Mallory's argument starts with the statement that <iframe> elements receive focus in some browsers. This raises the obvious question of whether they should. Is there a specification somewhere that mandates this? If not, you can't use it as the basis of a justification for making the "title" element mandatory. I could equally say that it doesn't receive focus in some other browser, so the "title" attribute is not needed. We need to dig deeper, but I am not sure where to look.

Steve