noframes & Content Guidelines

Hi there,

I've recently been running bobby over a few sites for people and explaining
the results to them.

I noticed that when run over a site with frames bobby comes up with the
guideline: "Ensure that pages are readable and usable without frames."

I cant find anywhere in the WAI Web Content Checklist that actually says
this however.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist.html

"Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation." is in
there as is, "Describe the purpose of frames and how frames relate to each
other if it is not obvious by frame titles alone. "

Although I did stagger on it somehow (through the mass of links and pages
you get from the checklist) in http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/ as
point 4.10.3

On further inspection, I guess its covered in part in checkpoint 1.1, but I
cant find anything that specifically mentions "noframes" in that part of the
techniques document.  I know space is a premium, but shouldn't some of these
points be given a bit more emphasis?

I could see a potential problem that someone who has used frames could just
look under the "And if you use frames (Priority 1)" heading in the checklist
and think "well my frames all have titles so I'm ok!"

Perhaps I'm missing something - I find navigating the techniques document
from the checklist quite difficult.

Actually, this makes me think of another question:  Is it the case that
<noframes> isn't considered as important as it used to be? (hence why its
not specifically mentioned in the checklist?)  I appreciate that most
browsers cope with them by letting the user select the individual frames in
the frameset...  (In which case, is it bobby thats a bit out of sync?)

....Or perhaps I've just been working too late (again).

- Paul

--
Paul Booth, Project Officer, DISinHE Office.
The UK's national centre for Disability and Information Systems in Higher
Education,
Department of Applied Computing, University of Dundee, Scotland
w:  http://www.disinhe.ac.uk/     t: 01382 345050      f: 01382 345509

Received on Thursday, 13 January 2000 17:15:42 UTC