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Google Accessible Search Released
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jul 20, 2006 11:27 AM
from the what-about-one-for-people-like-me dept.
from the what-about-one-for-people-like-me dept.
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."
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Google Accessible Search Released
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Still missing the point. (Score:1)
(http://del.icio.us/jvz | Last Journal: Sunday December 03 2006, @12:45PM)
Re:Still missing the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.justjournal.com/)
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:5, Insightful)
(http://www.idahoev.com/)
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.
Accessible Content (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://aerenhart.blogspot.com/)
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:4, Insightful)
Re:Accessible Content (Score:4, Funny)
Falun Gong Show (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=falun+gong
At some point it doesn't matter... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:At some point it doesn't matter... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://batteriesnimh.com/)
Microsoft.com NOT "accessible" (Score:4, Interesting)
one of the best tool ever (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://muzzle.footourist.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 03 2004, @01:10PM)
This could backfire (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.animats.com)
w00h00 - text-based search engine (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.valerieandevi.be/)
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.
No sponsored links (Score:2, Interesting)
this is good not only for... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://vindimy.dyndns.org/)
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? since blind people can't use mouse, there must be some other way for them to find a search box / search result, right?
Opportunities for the blind (Score:1, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday October 02 2006, @08:42AM)
Google Accessible in not according to W3C standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Image ALT Tags (Score:1)
AdWords (Score:1)
(http://www.kcmetroweb.com/)
Damn, I'd better get to work updating my site! (Score:3, Funny)
targeted marketing... (Score:2)
(http://www.liquidshells.net/)
Perfect application! (Score:2, Interesting)
This may even be used to prevent blindness.. (Score:1)
(http://www.codebeach.org/)
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)
(http://naerey.switch-case.org/)
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: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)
(http://www.skorchedearth.com/)
CSS can help with this, as it keeps the formatting away from the content, but you still have to keep your
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
(http://www.nosoup.net/)
I also think proper html-tags might help, so they can easily distinguish content from options/framework.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/)
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:5, Insightful)
(http://www.jdkoftinoff.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday July 15, @06:44PM)
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: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.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://cubemonkey.net/quotes)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://antiwar.com/)
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:"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 support in JAWS 7.10, you will experience increased accuracy, improved navigation, and better text recognition when reading Web pages or other virtual documents.
Visible Focus Rectangle
When you press TAB or SHIFT+TAB to move to links and buttons in Internet Explorer and Firefox, the focus rectangle is now visible. This rectangle is useful to sighted users because it visually indicates the location of the cursor. The focus rectangle does not move when you use the arrow keys or Navigation Quick Keys to read.
Route the Virtual Cursor to the JAWS Cursor
You can now press INSERT+NUM PAD PLUS in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and virtual documents to route the Virtual Cursor to the mouse pointer. Using this command moves the Virtual Cursor to the current location of the mouse pointer and can help sighted users navigate Web pages. In addition, routing the JAWS Cursor to the Virtual Cursor (INSERT+NUM PAD MINUS) is much more accurate and moves the mouse pointer to the exact character the Virtual Cursor is located on.
Route the PC Cursor to the Virtual Cursor
You can now press CTRL+INSERT+DELETE in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and virtual documents to route the PC Cursor to the Virtual Cursor. Using this command moves the PC Cursor (and the application focus) to the current location of the Virtual Cursor. Visually, the page will scroll so that the area containing the Virtual Cursor is visible on the screen. This command is the opposite of the Route Virtual to PC Cursor command (INSERT+DELETE).
One Setting for Controlling Page Refreshes
There is now only one setting for controlling page refreshes. Previously there were two settings, one for controlling page refreshes caused by the browser, and another for controlling refreshes caused by embedded ActiveX controls, such as Macromedia Flash. These have been consolidated into a single option for controlling both since it is often not apparent which is causing the page to refresh.
Improved Detection of Dynamic Page Updates
Previously, if script code was used on a page to control visibility without the user actually interacting with the page, JAWS would not detect the page update and would either show content that was not really there or not show content which was made visible. This should no longer occur.
Enhanced Screen Tracking
The screen no longer scrolls up or down erratically while you are using the Say All command or navigating by other means. The screen only moves when the content about to be read is not visible.
Document Presentation Mode Line Length
You can now define how long a single line will be when viewing an HTML page in Document Presentation Mode. This can help you read lengthy tables easier because all the content from each row in the table can fit on a single line. The increased line length stops JAWS from rendering rows across multiple lines. When you exit Document Presentation Mode, JAWS will render the page using the normal maximum line length.
The default line length in Document Presentation Mode is 400 characters, which is enough to fit most table rows on one line. To change the line length, open the Utilities menu and choose Configuration Manager. Then, open the Set Options menu and choose HTML Options. Enter a new line length in the Document Presentation Mode Maximum Line Length edit box located on the Text tab.
Like this. (Score:1)