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Thread: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?

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From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 9:52AM
Subject: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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Can someone explain to me, please, what the title attribute does in an iframe for screen reader users? (Success Criteria 4.1.2) What is its importance in making an iframe accessible?

Thank you,


Angela French
Internet/Intranet Specialist
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
www.sbctc.edu<;http://www.sbctc.edu/>;

From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 9:54AM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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http://webaim.org/techniques/frames/#iframe

Jared

From: JP Jamous
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 9:58AM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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It provides a summarized caption of what the iframe includes. Think of it as a Title element on a page. Without it would you know what this page talks about?

Why is that important? What if the iframe is a 3rd party add that I want to skip? I can hear the title and press the navigation key that would make me skip that iframe and go to something meaningful on the page.

From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 10:54AM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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Thanks JP, that makes sense now. I wasn't thinking of the crappy 3rd party stuff that comes in that no one wants to read! ;-)

Angela French

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 11:00AM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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also if you don't include it the thing the screenreader says is gibrish

Lucia Greco
Web Accessibility Evangelist
IST - Architecture, Platforms, and Integration
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
Follow me on twitter @accessaces


On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Thanks JP, that makes sense now. I wasn't thinking of the crappy 3rd
> party stuff that comes in that no one wants to read! ;-)
>
> Angela French
>
>

From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 11:05AM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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Thanks; I was thinking that most screen readers users don't configure the reader to read out title attributes.

Angela French

From: JP Jamous
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 11:32AM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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What Lucy is referring to, here, is that screen readers capture,

1. Page title inside the frame and that might be some weird combination of letters developers used to identify the page
2. Screen readers might capture the source URL of the page being called thinking that they are trying to help the blind user

You may not need to include a title attribute in certain iframes. If you just ensure that the loading page has a clear title element that will suffice. The screen reader would read this.

Where you encounter this is in a dynamic environment where pages in the iframe are constantly changing like Ads. You are better off eliminating the title attribute and using the page title element.

That is why I always stress manual evaluation. Remember evaluation tools are programs and programs only know what they know. Besides that they are dumb.

From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 11:52AM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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Our site uses embedded content from our Trumba calendar (basically a filtered view of our main calendar data) and it is in an iframe.
Here is an example: http://www.sbctc.edu/colleges-staff/commissions-councils/wactc/default.aspx. The content has a heading of "Calendar"./

Angela French

From: JP Jamous
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 12:49PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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I checked it out, but something caught my attention. I did not want to waste too much time digging into the markup.

In Internet Explorer, the iFrame has a title of " Calendar"
In Firefox it reports "Photo Upcoming frame"

Do you have a title attribute in that frame and if so what is it called?

From: Joseph Sherman
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 12:59PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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The iframe looks like it is Titled "Photo Upcoming"

<iframe src="javascript:'<html><head></head><body styleºckground-color:transparent></body></html>'" id="trumba.spud.0.iframe" name="trumba.spud.0.iframe" style="border-style:none;background-color:transparent;" scrolling="no" title="Photo Upcoming" width="100%" height="381"></iframe>


Joseph

>

From: JP Jamous
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 1:18PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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I see. Thank you Joseph.

You may want to be careful with this one Angela. Ensure that the frame has the same title on all browsers. You would just have to find the markup that works across all browsers.

From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 1:53PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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It is generated by Trumba (calendar) and is not descriptive of the content at all. It is the style of calendar layout within Trumba.)

From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 1:55PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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I've never heard of different browsers rendering a different value for the title. How can that be and how can I control that?

Angela French

From: Moore,Michael (Accessibility) (HHSC)
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 2:12PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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Given the code below I would say file a bug report with MS.

Mike Moore
Accessibility Coordinator
Texas Health and Human Services Commission
Civil Rights Office
(512) 438-3431 (Office)

From: JP Jamous
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 2:36PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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What comes to mind is if IE is executing your script or not.

From: JP Jamous
Date: Thu, Dec 15 2016 2:43PM
Subject: Re: why is title attribute necessary on iframes?
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I figured I'd give you more info.

If the loaded page in the frame has:
<title>Calendar</title>
But IE did not execute the JS script that Joseph dug up, then the SR would read the page title "Calendar"

If the JS script got executed by Firefox, then the frame title would take over the page title.