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Google Lauded for Accessible Search

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the ubiquitous-search dept.

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.'"

27 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. In related news by Marcos+Eliziario · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    1. Re:In related news by Utopia · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Here is a stupid fact:
      Search for 'Search' on the goog lab's accessible search page.
      MSN.com is listed as the first.

      Does that make MSN.com the most accessible compliant search page?
      I know/read that MSN.com has the highest complaince for CSS and HTML compared to the other portal pages.
      But accessible I think not.

    2. Re:In related news by hankwang · · Score: 4, Informative
      ANY evidence whatsoever that MSN's search results are less accessible to the blind?
      If I use Opera's "ignore author style" mode, it seems that the MSN search homepage is reasonably clean. It's just that the search box doesn't appear earlier than after about 8 pages of links for shopping, news, sports, money, and so on, even though in the formatted version, the search box is near the top of the page. Both in Yahoo Search and the standard Google search, the search box is quite close to the logical top of the page.
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      Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
    3. Re:In related news by jlarocco · · Score: 2, Informative

      What? MSN's search doesn't have anything on the page other than a search box. You do know you can just go to search.msn.com, right? In fact, in Opera, you can just add a new search using:

      http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=%25s

      And not even need to go there.

      Also, if you add this to your user CSS:

      div#ads_rightC {
      display: none;
      }
      div#ads_topC {
      display: none;
      }

      It will get rid of the ads in the search results.

      --
      Maybe not
  2. Accessibility is better than Flash by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by bigtrike · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Web is not TV, the Web is not a bitmap graphic, the Web is not a newspaper.

      It's not like a truck, it's a series of tubes.

    2. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by Bogtha · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The more accessibility is known, the less we'll have websites made in Flash (or Flash navigation menus, Flash content, etc).

      Sadly, this isn't the case. Using Flash doesn't make something less accessible, even older versions without support for screenreaders. It's when people use Flash without a fallback that accessibility problems arise. And of course, the latest versions of Flash have support for alternative user-agents built in.

      The stupid web developers that annoy people with improper use of Flash can continue to annoy people and still create perfectly accessible websites. Accessibility != usability.

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    3. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even modern Flash's support for accessibility is crap. Alternative content is fine, but people thinking that Flash has 'support for alternative user-agents built in' is madly misleading.

    4. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If your flash site has a fallback then you can just host the fallback, you don't need the flash site anymore.

    5. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The Web is not TV
      The web is whatever I feel like putting on it. Or hadn't you heard?
      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    6. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by Twillerror · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wow what a rant, that got up to 5 ( Insightful ). Way to go slashdot.

      HTML/CSS/JavaScript like any technology is getting old. It wasn't designed to really be for applications. Now we have Ajax hacks and a slew of other crap to try and make it like a normal desktop app...things that flash and java applets ( yes I know applets are not that great ) just do.

      Flash can be just as accesible if not more then a web page...it is all in the tools that make it accesible. Imagine if I wrote a flash app specifically for blind people...I'm guessing I could get a lot further then with just a web page.
      Instead of trying to make a page accessible...i'd rather see a version of the app written specifically for blind people. It'd be better if google or other companies teamed up with another company, give them the raw content as XML and let them expose it in a way that will make it easier to access. Browser are inherently visual are they not....maybe it'd make more sense for google to try and expose the information in a way that could be converted to brail or audio easily.

      Yes there are issues.
      http://www.webaim.org/techniques/flash/

      I'm sorry to the individuals out there that have disabilities. At the same time some content that is very hard if not impossible to make accessible can make it far easy to access for people without a disablity to use it. We need to find ways to appease both communities.

      What does the poster mean by the "real Web". And they SHOULD just post PDFs on the side of their content, they are way more accesible then HTML. I mean I'm sure you could get a program to read the content of a PDF far easier then you could get it to strip out text from an html document and read it.

    7. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by metamatic · · Score: 4, Insightful
      HTML/CSS/JavaScript like any technology is getting old. It wasn't designed to really be for applications.

      C is also getting old, and wasn't designed to be used for applications, or for any kind of graphical UI. So what?

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    8. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by Yvan256 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Most of them don't even consider the possibility that somebody would have Flash installed but prefer the alternative content.

      Such as myself. I usually surf using Safari with the plug-ins disabled. There's nothing more annoying than arriving at an empty white/black page that does absolutely nothing... because it's a "Flash intro" with the "skip button" inside the flash.

      News Flash: websites don't need an "intro" or "splash" page... The "main page" should be the "entry page" (like Slashdot, for example).
    9. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by jrockway · · Score: 3, Informative

      > So Google Video and YouTube should stop using Flash to serve videos?

      Yes, they should. Why should we be tied to one proprietary platform (flash) when there are plenty of lower-bandwidth, higher-quality, lower-priced solutions? Flash is kind of convenient, but not if it doesn't run on your platform or OS (Flash's license doesn't meet the DFSG guidelines, so I can't use it). I can't use YouTube at all as a result. At least Google lets me download the files in industry-standard formats that play easily on my system. (I would prefer that they use Ogg/Theora, but I'm willing to meet them half-way. Let me use my own video player, and I'm happy.)

      As for flash in general, it's mostly a waste. Again, I'm willing to meet halfway if they used SVG + ECMAscript instead. Then I could actually watch it on my computer. (And a screenreader could easily get at whatever text was in the SVG -- it's just plain text after all -- so SVG+scripts is much more accessible than flash.)

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      My other car is first.
    10. Re:Accessibility is better than Flash by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's all about speed.

      HTML/CSS are incredibly clumsy to work with, but that can be solved with things like Dojo. But there are some things you really can't speed up -- JavaScript is interpreted pretty much everywhere, and HTML/CSS must be interpreted, because the JavaScript could be modifying the HTML source at any time.

      But it's also incredibly difficult to extend HTML/CSS, since even the most recent standard versions will probably never be supported by Internet Exploder. This means that very few new things are ever added that could be useful to an AJAX developer, because anything new will only be supported in one browser, or none at all.

      Thus, web applications will always be slower-running, and will probably be slower to develop for a very long time. But C can be almost pleasant to develop in, due to the massive amount of work that's been put into libraries, and it's also fast enough that it's almost a standard benchmark for measuring the speed of other languages.

      I am not saying I prefer C, but I don't think C needs to be replaced. But much about the web really does. PHP is hideously ugly, Ruby is ungodly slow, and AJAX is both and then some.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  3. Previous /. discussion on Accessible Search by xmas2003 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Original discussion for background on this followup.

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    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
  4. Visual CAPTCHAs in Google's own services by tepples · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Visual CAPTCHAs in Google's own services by 0racle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They're also not following W3C standards for accessibility. Google can currently do no wrong, even when they do exactly what others would be blasted for as being wrong.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    2. Re:Visual CAPTCHAs in Google's own services by roach2002 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Blogger has audio CAPTCHAs now. Check out my blog for an example.

      And they're doing it for accounts too: Check it out.

      So yes, now they're doing audio CAPTCHAs.

    3. Re:Visual CAPTCHAs in Google's own services by Arker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think that's exactly true. Notice that they do NOT rank themselves highly on their own accessible search. They aren't cheating here. They do have some problems, but every indication is that they'll be fixing them, not obfuscating like the competition would do.

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      =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
      Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  5. Porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://www.google.com/u/accessible?cx=accessible!& q=porn&btnG=Search

    Nuff said :)

    1. Re:Porn? by SleepyHappyDoc · · Score: 3, Funny

      Seventh hit on that page: "Porn makes you blind."

      Nuff said ;)

      --
      Stasis is death. Embrace change.
  6. W3C by ManoSinistra · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:W3C by richdun · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wow, I never ran Google.com through the validator. That's pretty small stuff they're tripping on too - no DTD, no quotes around most attributes, etc. I love that in the Maps API (and other places) they recommend strongly that you use XHTML Strict 1.0 (which I do anyway), but they don't even put a DTD in their main page.

  7. Good that they are not following WCAG... by baboonlogic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  8. Google's page doesn't even XHTML validate! by rklrkl · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Amnesty international, not so good press by Spliffster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.