I am using it for years now. The famous T.V. Raman designed this page. It's
very acessible an easy. You can just use the jaws shortcut keys like h to
navigate. It rates web sites in terms of accessibility. The only
disadvantage is that it does not tell you how many items were found in the
search.
Best regards,
Amiyo Biswas.
Cell: +91-9433464329
Skype ID: amiyo11
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ajay Dhanak" <adha...@gmail.com>
To: <accessindia@accessindia.org.in>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 9:13 PM
Subject: [AI] google accessible search
hi friends,
there is something called accessible google search, which is offered by
google for its visually impaired users.
{sorry, if the topic has already been discussed}
link:
www.labs.google.com/accessible/
I was wondering how it is different from normal search
and hence, found below mentioned document.
Accessible Search FAQ
What is Google Accessible Search?
Accessible Search is an early Google Labs product designed to identify
and prioritize search results that are more easily usable by blind and
visually impaired users. Regular Google search helps you find a set of
documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes
one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that
result set.
How does Accessible Search work?
In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of
signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to
favor pages that degrade gracefully --- pages with few visual
distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images
turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op's
technology, which improves search results based on specialized
interests.
Why is Google offering this?
Accessible Search is a natural and important extension of Google's
overall mission to better organize the world's information and make it
universally accessible. Google Accessible Search is designed to help
the visually impaired find the most relevant, useful and comprehensive
information, as quickly as possible.
In the past, visually impaired Google users have often waded through a
lot of inaccessible websites and pages to find the required
information. Our goal is to provide a more useful and accessible web
search experience for the blind and visually impaired.
How do you decide which sites are "accessible" and which are not?
Broadly, Google defines accessible websites and pages as content that
the blind and visually impaired can use and consume using standard
online technology, and we've worked with a number of organizations to
determine which websites and pages meet those criteria. Our methods
for identifying accessible pages and content are always evolving;
Currently we take into account several factors, including a given
page's simplicity, how much visual imagery it carries and whether or
not its primary purpose is immediately viable with keyboard
navigation.
How can sites make their content more accessible to the blind?
Some of the basic recommendations on how to make a website more usable
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. There are many organizations and online resources
that offer Website owners and authors guidance on how to make websites
and pages more accessible for the blind and visually impaired. The W3C
publishes numerous guidelines including Web Content Access Guidelines
that are helpful for Website owners and authors. Broad adherence to
these guidelines is one way of ensuring that sites are universally
accessible.
Does Accessible Search Filter Out Inaccessible Content?
No. First of all accessible is a very subjective measure --- what's
more, queries can vary widely with respect to how accessible the
results are. As an example, if you are looking for information such as
weather forecasts or reference material such as the definition of an
unfamiliar term, the result set often consists of both accessible and
inaccessible content. In these cases, Google Accessible Search
promotes those results that have been measured to be more accessible.
On the other hand, if the particular query is about video games, the
chances are fairly high that a majority of the best results for that
query will be visually busy pages. So in the final analysis, we never
filter content in Google Accessible Search; we pick the best results
exactly as we do with regular Google search, and then re-order the top
results by their level of accessibility.
The Result Set Looks Identical To Regular Search?
The operational word in the above question is looks. Google Accessible
Search does not in any way change the look and feel of Google search
results. What it does (see earlier question) is to re-order results
based on how accessible they are.
Navigating Search Results
After Google Accessible Search was launched, many of our users sent us
feedback about the results page (both Google Accessible and regular
search) being difficult to navigate with screenreaders. In response,
we have updated the results page in both cases to have section headers
that can be used in conjunction with screenreader hotkeys to quickly
skim through the page. Thus, once Google has responded to your search
query, use your access technology's "move by section" keys to move
between the section that displays sponsored ads and the individual
results.
How Can I Perform More Complex Searches?
Notice that http://labs.google.com/accessible has a link to Advanced
Search in addition to the simple text box. Use this link to access
Google Advanced Search --- this provides you the ability to focus your
search on documents in a specific language. The resulting search will
continue to use Google Accessible Search for ordering the results.
How Can I Compare Regular Search With Google Accessible?
Google Accessible Search is an experiment, and to be an effective
experiment, end-users need to be able to easily compare the results
obtained by using regular Google search vs Google Accessible. Notice
that the top of the results page contains a pair of radio buttons
labeled Web Search and Accessible Search you can easily repeat your
search by pressing the appropriate radio button and clicking on the
submit button.
How Can I Make My Site Rank Higher?
And finally, for the ever popular question that everyone likes to ask.
As with regular search, the best thing you can do with respect to
making your site rank highly is to create good content. In fact you
can think of GoogleBot as the world's most influential blind user ---
the content that matters most to our indexing technology --- good
quality text --- is what blind users hear when using spoken output. I
highly recommend Google's Guidelines for Webmasters as a starting
point. Once you've ensured you've fully addressed these, I'd suggest
reviewing your content to see how well it degrades gracefully with
respect to end-user abilities. As a simple example, try the following
additional checks (in addition to viewing the page in text-only mode
as suggested by the Google Webmaster Guidelines):
Try browsing your site on a monochrome display
Try using your site without a mouse
How Can I Make Accessible Search My Default Home Page
Here is the short answer for IE and Firefox. Assuming that you are on
the Accessible Search page, the following key sequence: Alt+t, o,
Alt+c, Enter should make that your default home page. This sequence is
the same for both IE and Firefox.
Here is a more detailed explanation of what the above achieves.
On IE, go to Tools, Internet Options, and under the General tab in the
Home Page area, click the "Use Current" button. Note that the General
tab is the default tab when Internet Options first comes up.
On Firefox, go to Tools, Options, and under the Main tab in the
Startup area, click the "Use Current Pages" button. Note that the Main
tab is the default tab when Options first comes up.
--
source: google.com
Wishing all on Louis Braille Bi-centinal birthday, January 4!
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