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December 26, 2006

Google Maps Offers Speech-Friendly Alternatives

Over at the Google blog, Googler T.V. Raman shares useful tips as a technologist who is visually impaired.

For blind searchers and others who use spoken outputs, screenreaders or a Braille display, the visual display that is returned from a Google Maps or Google Local search is often translated poorly in such readers.

So Google has added a simple, alternative view into Google Maps for visually impaired users, with the Textual Maps UI. It's also extremely useful for any searcher using a non-graphical display and can quickly look up a location by typing a simple English query of the form of a start address to end address.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:31 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2006

Optimizing Search for the Visually Impaired

Those of us with good eyesight often don't give much thought to the challenges visually impaired users face in reading, much less searching for, content on the web. However, there are some straightforward techniques that can improve usability for these users. And Google has developed an accessible search interface that also helps vision-impaired users. More on the merits and importance of accessibility in today's SearchDay article, Making Search Accessible to Visually Impaired Users.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:02 AM | Permalink

July 20, 2006

Google Labs Launches Accessible Web Search

Google has launched Google Accessible Search, a stripped down version of the Google search results page that also serves up results to sites deemed more accessible to those who are visually impaired.

The design was created to make it easier and more effective for the blind and visually impaired. The results are a bit different, tailored to the visually impaired, to show more accessible pages in the results. Google told me how this actually works:

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.

It is also important to note that Google Accessible Search is currently ad free, conduct a search for ipod and you'll see no ads.

Matt Bailey has his take on this new Google product at his Accessibility Blog. Postscript From Danny: While I love the new offering, it's still disappointing that Google didn't provide an easy way to increase font sizes in the way that Big.com does.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:09 PM | Permalink

June 15, 2006

Big.com Gets Ask Results, Toolbar

I mentioned how useful Big.com was back in October, making it easy for those with low vision to see things more clearly thanks to its big fonts. Brad Haugaard, the project manager over there, dropped a note to say there's been some changes to improve the service. What's new? Results now come from Ask, rather than LookSmart. There's been a general facelift all around. And there's a new Big Toolbar for Internet Explorer to let you make any page look bigger -- perhaps even those from the major search engines. When I looked at Big last time, I found none of the major search engines made it easy to increase font sizes, something I believe is still the case. I know, I know -- you can do it with stylesheets or using features within both Firefox or IE. But it's nice for people if the search engines themselves make it easier.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:14 PM | Permalink

October 12, 2005

Big.com For Really Big Results; How About The Majors Offering The Same?

Search marketer Laura Thieme mentioned in an email to me loving Big.com. Hmm. Never heard of it. Taking a look, it's pretty cool. Basically, the search box and results over there are really, really big. "The most readable results on the web," is the site's slogan. Sure, you can make your font sizes bigger in your browser to make any of the major search engines more readable. But this is a simple, easy way to do it. Results, as far as I can tell, come from LookSmart. Doing some digging, I found the site is backed by Bill Gross and Perfect Market Technologies, which also runs Snap.

Out of curiosity, I did a fast check at Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves to see if they offer a preference to make font sizes bigger. Nope. I might have missed these options, of course -- but I don't think so. It's something they should consider. I also was surprised to find that I couldn't easily locate any text-only version options for these services. I was sure Google, at least, had offered a text-only version. If so, it's nowhere easily to be found.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:28 AM | Permalink

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