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Re: Google Accessibility Search

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From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Jul 21, 2006 4:00AM

> 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.

That would be the most appropriate action - offering as a filter
rather than an own version of search. However, that would call all the
hard-core accessibility techies on the plan to complain about Google
not validating and using JavaScript on an accessible search page.
It is the Catch 22 that stops a lot of large corporations to do
anything extra or advertising their accessibility enhancements - there
are just too many people out there whose sole test for accessibility
is "does it validate" and "does it use javascript".

> 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?

I'd be very interested in seeing the filtering algo, too :-)

--
Chris Heilmann
Book: http://www.beginningjavascript.com
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/