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Re: Google Accessibility Search

for

From: Emma Duke-Williams
Date: Jul 21, 2006 3:30AM

On 7/21/06, Mark Magennis < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Christian Heilmann wrote:
> >
> > I like the idea, but it is - possibly involuntarily - advertising the
> > idea that there needs to be a "special" version of any web app for
> > blind people, which is a myth we tried to get rid of for years now.
>
> I fully agree. It undermines one of the most important arguments in
> favour of universally accessible websites - that you do not have to
> compromise the functionality and aesthetics in order to improve
> access. This is mostly true most of the time in today's Web.
>
> I am also concerned that it reinforces the erroneous belief that
> accessibility is about special adaptations for people with vision
> impairment. It is not. It is about catering for the normal diversity
> of sensory, cognitive and physical abilities that exists in almost
> any user population.
>

One solution that I could see would be for Google to add the
"accessibility" option to the options that you get under advanced, so,
as well as being able say you want it in French, you could also say
that you want it to be suited to screen readers.
That then wouldn't be having a separate site for the screen-reader
friendly results, but it would be allowing people to prioritise.

Has any one tested it to see how well it ranks sites that do easily
allow you to enlarge the text size in IE, (e.g. BBC), and those that
don't (CNN)? Do they distinguish between sites that provide
transcripts/ subtitled audio/video & those that don't. What about
sites that make good use of clear English?

However, this is a start!

Emma