Google Accessible Search Released 134
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google today released Accessible Search, a Google Labs product aiming to rank higher pages which are optimized for blind users. Google asks you to adhere to the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines if you want to make sure your pages are accessible (and thus, rank better on Google Accessible Search). I wrote a small tool to compare results of default and accessible results."
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Informative)
Many aren't at present, that's the whole point of making it easier to find those that are. Of course, making pages as device independent as practical helps many others as well as the blind.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
CSS can help with this, as it keeps the formatting away from the content, but you still have to keep your
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Writing ASP script I always add " & vbcrlf" at the end of a "Response.write" line of code. Makes it a lot easier to find errors anyway...
I know, Perl, PHP, RoR is better. (Added for karma. Why not??)
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
CSS can help, but there's a reason why people use tables rather than CSS to lay out web pages: it works. There are a lot of caveats with CSS. As other posters have noted, IE doesn't follow the W3C standards, and therefore tends to display a lot of content defined with stylesheets in unexpected and not altogether wonderful ways. On the other hand, if you rewrite your CSS to work in IE, other browsers don't always work well. However
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Are you on the css-discuss list? They can be pretty snarky, but they're also helpful.
I'll grant you your last point,
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
I also think proper html-tags might help, so they can easily distinguish content from options/framework.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
No, before you go around spouting "STFU" at other folks, make sure you're able to back up your claims. Just becuase a company says "our stuff has accessibility features" doesn't mean they DO, or that they are useful to people who would need them.
PS: I just tried to find out more about their accessibility features, but they use Flash to explain that, and I don't have sound on this machine... kind of useless.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
The amazing thing is that google, by page-ranking these pages higher, I believe it will do more to improve web accessibility than any law or standards organisation could.
--jeffk++
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Now if only they would do the same thing to down-list sites that are "Optimised for IE6" (or any other browser). The standards already exist, but for most content creators there is no incentive to follow them as long as the majority of their visitors are happy. Google is uniquely capable of reducing the number of visitors....
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Informative)
A well designed standards based website is built in a uniform standard way and contains all the hints required for a screenreader to pickup on.
Badly designed sites use lots of custom content and stupid user interface elements which make it difficult to access (both from a blind screen readers perspective and usually from a normal users view.
Still missing the point. (Score:1)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh and he used Internet explorer. His software tied in with that so it looked like an ie hit and even tried to load all the crap everyone else deals with in IE. He did IE on windows using a dell.
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Anyone know of any resources for improving your sites for the visually impaired, or even some sort of tool that will let me experience my sites as a blind person would... it might help for some perspective.
And here I thought I was getting the
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Get a copy of JAWS, put on a blindfold and try to find your way around; That's what I do.
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:3, Informative)
Which is why I use unordered lists for lists of links. Using CSS, you can just do this:
And if XHTML 2.0 ever gains traction, making navigational lists is as easy as:
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tables should be used to mark up truly tabular information ("data tables"). Content developers should avoid using them to lay out pages ("layout tables"). Tables for any use also present special problems to users of screen readers (refer to checkpoint 10.3).
Even Google's ultra-simple front page violates this guideline, despite zero need to do so.
Point 3 of the guidelines says this:
Mark up documents with the proper structural elements. Control presentation with style sheets rather than with presentation elements and attributes.
But if you dig into the source of google.com, you see cruft like this: Google fails rather dramatically to implement any web standard, not even including a doctype. These problems aren't limited to their front page, either. news.google.com is just as bad or worse.
This is really a shame. The content that google presents is lightweight and free of the layout challenges that can sometimes make web standards difficult to follow: Google should be the perfect test case for perfect standards and accessibility. Instead, it's a throwback to 1996 web design. That they're launching a tool to test accessibility to the blind is incredibly ironic.
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:1)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
It's a waste of time and less user-friendly to try maintaining two versions. Accessibility improvements generally improve the experience for normal visitors as well. I guess you're assuming that an accessible design has to be boring and plain, but this isn't the case, you can have normal-looking designs that degrade gracefully so that they are still accessible.
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:1)
How long would it take a good Perl developer to proxy the Google search page, and to produce validating results which look identical in all the major browsers? Probably less than a day. Of course, Google would need to take more time to optimize it, but they've had years to do this. Get with i
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Pitty they still need to support Netscape 4, SomeWierdWebBrowserYou'veNeverHeardOfBefore and friends.
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
That's because you don't need to. Using CSS doesn't make your page stop working with older browsers, it was specifically designed to be backwards compatible. For example, using <body bgcolor="#ffffff"> instead of body {background: #fff} is unnecessary in b
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
You use tags to mark the beginning and ends of elements. That is all you can possibly do with them. You are talking about element types, not tags.
Perhaps, but why? Are you saying that it actually makes them money to have Netscape 3 users see a white background instead of a light gr
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Whatever.
>Marketing isn't an end in itself. The objective is to make money. You stole my argument. W3C isn't a goal in itself. Turning the argument around doesn't fix that. If so, please give a list of browsers that fail to render the tabled and fonted Google page otherwise.
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
No, but it has beneficial consequences. For example:
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
But regarding your question, the answer, again, is: money.
Take any percentage of users with "old browsers" over the years, and against that you can put an audience break point where your neglectance or scaring away of those people costs more than serving them earns.
Although
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:2)
Have you ever actually looked at Google's code? If they were that concerned about bandwidth, there's plenty of other things they could do to save bandwidth while still conforming to spec. Google's invalid code seems to be caused by ignorance or apathy, not efficiency.
Running it through RAAKT yields more errors (Score:1)
missing language info, missing headings, using markup not compatible with semantics.
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:1)
Accessible Content (Score:5, Insightful)
How can sites make their content more accessible to the blind?
Some of the basic recommendations on how to make a website more useable and accessible include keeping Web pages easy to read, avoiding visual clutter -- especially extraneous content -- and ensuring that the primary purpose of the Web page is immediately accessible with full keyboard navigation
I wish more sites where like that. Do you want info? You get it right there, without all the mumbo-jumbo associated with most current websites.
Re:Accessible Content (Score:2)
Get rid of flash/java/javascript for anything related to navigation on the site! These things are nice for showing a movie, or a small program, but not for main content and navigation
A completely cluttered page with an option added afterwards to see it in larger fonts is still a cluttered page! Once I saw a site for local elections where there was a link
Re:Accessible Content (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Accessible Content (Score:2)
I agree that it's stupid to have per-website controls for this, but you don't have to create entirely separate pages, the typical approach is just to set a cookie that lets the server know that it should include a body { font-size: whatever; } rule. The page contents can stay the same, it's an additional style rule that's included - one line of code.
Re:Accessible Content (Score:2)
Re:Accessible Content (Score:2)
No, I knew exactly what you were getting at, which is why I said "I agree that it's stupid to have per-website controls for this". But one of your assumptions was way off, which is what I was addressing. I've been designing with CSS for years, you don't need to explain the basics to me.
Re:Accessible Content (Score:1)
Re:Accessible Content (Score:1)
You do understand what "typical" means, don't you? You said:
In actual fact, nobody does what you imagine to happen. They use the approach I described. Just because I described the approach, it doesn't mean tha
Re:Accessible Content (Score:1)
What's wrong with using javascript to replace a default menu with a drop-down menu? My site with javascript disabled has a single link to a foto page, which lists all available albums. With javascript enabled, the link still points to that page, but mouse-overing it also opens a menu with direct links to the various albums.
Re:Accessible Content (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Accessible Content (Score:1)
Re:Accessible Content (Score:2)
Falun Gong Show (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=falun+gong
Re:Falun Gong Show (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point it doesn't matter... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:At some point it doesn't matter... (Score:2)
Re:At some point it doesn't matter... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At some point it doesn't matter... (Score:1, Funny)
Well, I've seen Photoshop user's skill levels, and this could explain a lot...
Re:At some point it doesn't matter... (Score:1)
Microsoft.com NOT "accessible" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft.com NOT "accessible" (Score:3, Informative)
one of the best tool ever (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:one of the best tool ever (Score:1)
Re:one of the best tool ever (Score:1)
The accessible version tended to show up more
I'll be using the comparison site for
This could backfire (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This could backfire (Score:2)
Re:This could backfire (Score:3, Insightful)
ADA does not require accessable private websites. (Score:3, Informative)
The Olympics was an Australian case. Target was not "successfully sued"; that's still pending. Southwest Airlines won a case over that issue, Access Now vs. Southwest. [bytowninternet.com]; their "virtual ticket counter" does not have to be handicapped-accessable. Access Now appealed, and the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected the appeal. [findlaw.com] That's the only final US court decision on the subject to date.
As the court put it, it's up to Congress to change the ADA if Congress wants it to apply to the Internet.
Re:ADA does not require accessable private website (Score:2)
The point I was trying to make is that it would be shortsighted and possibly very stupid for major companies to be ignoring web accessibility.
Wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
w00h00 - text-based search engine (Score:4, Funny)
I really commend google for providing us and maybe even forcing webdevelopers to use decent, W3C compatible standards. This means soon enough, we'll have websites that aren't IE compatible.
Re:w00h00 - text-based search engine (Score:2)
I like MS technologies as much as the next guy (.NET has some pretty good stuff) but.. I think they're a dinosaur and dinosaurs tend to stifle innovation.
No sponsored links (Score:2, Interesting)
this is good not only for... (Score:2, Insightful)
so, has anyone tried using any of the screen reading software to test whether search results are actually readable without looking at the screen?
and also what about keyboard shortcuts? sinc
Opportunities for the blind (Score:1, Informative)
Google Accessible in not according to W3C standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Google Accessible in not according to W3C stand (Score:1)
Image ALT Tags (Score:1)
Re:Image ALT Tags (Score:2)
There's no such thing as an alt tag, alt is an attribute. Not everything remotely related to the web is called a "tag".
As for online shopping, Tesco's accessibility improvements earned them £13m per annum [sean.co.uk] - accessibility can be a source of profits, not a cost.
AdWords (Score:1)
Damn, I'd better get to work updating my site! (Score:3, Funny)
targeted marketing... (Score:2)
Perfect application! (Score:2, Interesting)
This may even be used to prevent blindness.. (Score:1)
For Thruly accessible webpages (Score:3, Interesting)
The w3c check is not an acurate measure on how thruly accessible the pages are
I now this because I have friends who are blind and frecuently use screen reader applications
If you really want to make sure your pages are accessible then download the trial version of Jaws for Windows [freedomscientific.com] wich is the defacto standard screen reader. This trial is limited to 40 minutes per session, but those 40 minutes should be enough to test your webpages.
As mentioned in posts above, make sure the content can be reaced quickly by readers.
Re:For Thruly accessible webpages (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no. On the one hand, WCAG does have acknowledged shortcomings and it's certainly no guarantee. But aural browsers and screenreaders tend to be absolutely awful when it comes to supporting the markup that's intended to help them. They aren't designed to read accessible websites, they are designed to scrape as much meaning as they can out of inaccessible websites.
So from a practical perspective, yes, you need to test in individual assistive user-agents if you want your website to be as usable as possible by disabled people. But when the markup is fine according to the W3C and assistive user-agents get it wrong, it's usually because the developers of the assistive user-agents haven't even heard of the W3C.
natural progression (Score:1)
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/687/3313/1024/
Not trying to be a jerk, I really was just wondering what would come up. This is a very interesting search function.
Great (Score:1)
Finally... (Score:1)
ie - fiefox (Score:1)
Mozilla Firefox
Official site of the open-source browser. Includes product downloads, release notes, features overview,...
www.mozilla.com/firefox/ - 14k - Cached - Similar pages
unlike normal google.. ?
Google Suggest (Skor: +5 Hopefully Funny) (Score:1)
Looks like 1 in 9 sites makes the cut (Score:2)
So the question is: how many web designers will wake up and smell the alt text?
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's utter nonsense. First off, you think blind people can't process information? WTF?
Second, it's not even about 'optimising for the blind' so much as simply 'using (rather than abusing) the web.' The web was designed from the start to deliver information in a neutral format so that the user-agent (browser) could then deliver that information appropriately. This may mean laying it out on a screen (of unknown dimensions and capability,) or it may mean speaking it aloud, or whatever. Proper web design is accessible to everyone. The errors that make sites inaccessible to the blind are the same errors that make them annoying and sometimes unusable to the rest of us as well.
Keep in mind that you cannot dictate layout and use html properly and you'll have no problem. Ignore that fact and you shut out a lot of people, not just the blind.
Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)
It is a VERY good feeling to have, when someone that is in their 40s tell you how grateful they are for your service, since it is the first time in her life, she was able to ac
Re:"Tab order" for links? (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a list [freedomscientific.com] of Features and Enhancements for the latest versions of JAWS (a widely used screen reader). Reading through them will give you some idea of how screen readers operate. There's a lot more to it than you think.
Here's a clip from one of them:
HTML and the Internet
Improved Performance on the Web
With the new Internet and HTML supp
Like this. (Score:1)