Google Chrome Frame – still an accessibility black hole?

September 23, 2011Development

Back in 2009 I wrote Google Chrome Frame – accessibility black hole, now 2 years on what has changed? This quick revisit has been prompted by some recent tweets.

Refer to Google Chrome accessibility update

Chrome Frame 14 accessibility support

As I said this a quick revisit, so will get straight to the point. It is my understanding that Chrome Frame development tracks the chrome browser, including accessibility support. Chrome and hence Chrome Frame does not support labelling of form controls using standard HTML methods.
Note: older versions of Internet Explorer and current versions of Safari only support the for/id method.

The chrome team are working on accessibility issues. There are still quite a few other issues such as lack of support for Windows High Contrast mode. I believe the lack of support for form control labelling alone is a showstopper. The chrome team are aware of the issue, lets hope it gets fixed soon. Check out HTML5Accessibility.com for browser accessibility support issues with new HTML5 features.

So while Chrome/Chrome Frame is no longer an accessibility black hole, it is still akin to looking through a glass darkly, for some.

Addendum

Great to read about accessibility improvements in Chrome 15!

Categories: Development

About Steve Faulkner

Steve was the Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi before he left in October 2023. He joined TPGi in 2006 and was previously a Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at vision australia. Steve is a member of several groups, including the W3C Web Platforms Working Group and the W3C ARIA Working Group. He is an editor of several specifications at the W3C including ARIA in HTML and HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0. He also develops and maintains HTML5accessibility and the JAWS bug tracker/standards support.