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Google Lauded for Accessible Search
With the recent release of a modified version of their search engine, Google is receiving praise from many different groups. The new Google Accessible Search was released as a Google labs project which prioritize pages based on their likelihood of being accessible to visually impaired users after the original search results are returned. From the article: "The best-known guidelines for building an accessible site are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from W3C. But these are not the basis of Google's new service. Raman said: 'We don't test against WCAG. We think in the spirit of those guidelines, but we don't test against them verbatim.' Instead he endeavored to identify 'what works for the end-user,' describing a process of 'experimentation, training and machine learning.'"
A Microsoft source revealed that MSN will have "Accessible Search Personal Experience Edition(TM)" available next winter. ASPEE will require customers to buy "Microsoft Genuine Advantage Neural Control Implant(TM)". According to Microsoft the use of a neural implant will be advantageous to customers, because they will be automatically "shut-down" if caught using a non-genuine version os "Windows for Brains", what would help them to be law-abiding citizens.
Your ad could be here!
The more accessibility is known, the less we'll have websites made in Flash (or Flash navigation menus, Flash content, etc).
Flash webmasters: If you can't handle the real Web, you might as well put PDFs online instead of a real website. The Web is not TV, the Web is not a bitmap graphic, the Web is not a newspaper. You can't assume anything about the reader (text, speech, screen size (if any), download speed, etc). Or at least stop calling your Flash files "websites". Thanks.
The article doesn't say this, but TV Raman is himself blind and author of emacspeak.
Original discussion for background on this followup.
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Wouldn't Google Accounts and Gmail have a lower HandiRank because the sign-up page requires responding to a visual CAPTCHA? In fact, Gmail requires two: one for the confirmation of a mobile phone service commitment (most phones don't support text to speech for SMS) and one for the Google account.
http://www.google.com/u/accessible?cx=accessible!& q=porn&btnG=Search
:)
Nuff said
It is my understanding that part of the "Accessible" algorithm that ranks pages is how well the website follows W3C compliant code (HTML, XHTML, and so forth). If that is so, that's great. It may force people to not only consider good keywords and descriptions as far as SEO goes, but to also make their code more standards-compliant.
First hit:
Tool - Official Site [Flash required]
www.toolband.com/ - 2k - Cached - Similar pages
You'd think they'd automatically filter "Flash required" sites out? =)
WCAG 2.0 is really crappy. Its a standard that hardly achieves any real accessibility. Here is a really good rant on WCAG 2.0 - To hell with WCAG 2.0. Its about the only thing that it seems w3c has got terribly worng.
Good step for blind people with hearing. Now how do I set up a prepaid mobile phone to read the menus and SMS messages aloud?
And it still doesn't help people with Helen Keller's disability. Anything that can be read by a Braille display can be read by a spambot.
This may be far-fetched, but if there's enough support for it, I wouldn't mind it being the default method of search on Google.
:) ).
::waits for gasps to subside::
Or, perhaps make it optional (say on Personalized Homepage). I like the way Accessible Search works (plus it makes my sites show higher up
For what's supposed to be an "accessible" search engine page, Google have made pitiful efforts to even bother validating the XHTML (yes it has DOCTYPE of XHTML 1.0 Transitional). Check out the W3C's validation of it - 8 errors, including some outrageous typos like "bgtcolor" instead of "bgcolor" and no closing slashes (required for XHTML) in their <br> tags. I find it amazing that Google would tout such an search engine on its accessibility merits when it doesn't even validate due to blatant errors that are easily fixable.
If you come to think of it, it must be much easier for Google to understand pages that are visually-impaired-friendly than flashy illogical ones. I recall reading comments about its sentience... one could actually put together a conspiration theory with all this stuff, it seems. But do no evil.
In the slashes case I can think of one good reason why google wouldn't do it - to make the page smaller (few people serve so many pages that this is actually a valid excuse but I can well believe saving one byte would save Google money on heavily trafficked pages). However that typo is less explicable - that just seems wrong (unless someone is making use of a parser error or something). Google's XHTML mobile page doesn't seem to have too many errors in but yeah, there's room for improvement.
The search result pages say "Copyright ©2000 Google Inc." — accessible search six years in the making!
Using valid (X)HTML is no guarantee for accessibility. Worse is that they are mising some basic features in their search page that would have made it more accessible. Run it through BACC - the basic accesibility analyzer to see some errors.
Standards Schmandards
This can be compared to the one time I was eating captain crunch and my dog sat down on my foot and decided Fit was time to take a piss, ruined a pair of perfectly good socks, and I didn't have a mop handy so my cat came along and Plicked it up. I was just all like O_O WTF.
On images and hyperlinks, use the ALT and TITLE attributes.
On acronyms and abbrevations, surround them with the and tags.
Make sure sides validate as valid HTML or XHTML.
Use CSS and make sure the CSS validate as valid.
Make the site semantic.
Do not use tables for layout, use CSS such as .
Use the ACCESSKEY attribute on hyperlinks.
Anybody else do a search for pr0n and related terms?
Did you notice ? No ads in Google Accessible Search. What a relieve!
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were acused by Amnesty international were accused to "beeing evil".
a couple of days later google releases an accessible search which seems to be rushed out badly (their code doesn't validate to basic HTML standards, let alon WAI and other compatibilities which would really help disabled people).
just a coincidence ? I think not.
They have managed to avoid bad press in the tech world.
Hi there,
what do they really mean with 'accessible'? I'm sorry but I can't figure out how
could enhance the accessibility of a search engine.
Considering the amount of money google has, I think they should invest some more to make their sites really Web standard compliant and clean up that 'tag soup'! Please, google, consider good websites as examples, first.
Federico http://www.maggi.cc/
Hi there,
s -search-for-blind.html
I was interested in this as well, as I currently work on making my screencasts as accessible as possible. However, according to my quick test, this "accessible google search" does not favor sites/pages that are Section 508 or W3C compliant.
http://conficio.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-offer
So who gets it right? The US government or Google? Should we test now for Google ranking instead?
I can't say I'm happy that Google does invent another standard here. I wished they would simply test for what is out there and agreed upon as well as mandated by US and UK governments. It is hard enough to make this happen. We don't need more confusion in this sector.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/