Earlier this year, Google released an accessible search for visually impaired users, a personal project of Google engineer Dr. T.V. Raman. This move came hot on the heels of Google abandoning “CAPTCHA”, which required users to type the letters that they see in an image. It proved to be hard if you had full sight, and nigh on impossible if you did not.

With the CAPTCHA system, blind users were not able to access many Google services, such as GMail, Blogger, Google Groups, or a Google account, as the visual challenge kept them from participating.

Dr. Raman comes from a background of advocating standards-based programming and structured data on the web, and highlighted three key phrases: ‘clean,’ ‘well-structured’ and ‘semantic’ when looking at search engines. He believes that Web
sites creating clean, well-formed XHTML content will, over time, find it significantly easier to serve all their users better—simply because their content will be easier to manage and evolve.

Google’s accessible search was received positively by the blind community, yet many low-vision users took issue with the tagline of “search for the visually impaired.” Why? It turns out that many sites are accessible for blind users, yet the same amount of accessibility is not available to low-vision users, who require different methods in order to access the content.

The main obstacle to creating accessible web sites is that needs vary widely—there is no single “fix” that will make a site accessible to all users. Because of the varied nature of access, the multiple types of assistive technology, and multiple user needs, sites must cater to a host of diverse combinations.

One blind user of Google said:

“What is ‘usable’ to people with varying levels of vision impairment has hardly been studied and those of us interested in doing so are few and far between. So, in my opinion, moving from ‘accessible’ to ‘usable’ will
take another decade.”

Google continues to enhance its accessible search tool. It has recently been improved to give blind users access to the same advanced search features that are available in the regular Google search.

Dr, Raman feels that the impact of the accessible search will go beyond a simple service and one that will affect the development of the web. “I hope that as we continue to improve accessible search, we’ll have a long-term positive impact on increasing awareness of the need to create clean, accessible web content,” he says.
[Via Search Engine Watch]