Accessible Google Search

Another interesting project emerging from the Google Labs initiative (where Google employees are encouraged to come with inventive ideas of their own) has been launched recently. It’s the Google Accessible Search and it works much it the same way as the traditional Google Search except that it factors in the accessibility of the pages when deciding rankings. It’s designed primarily as a tool for the visually impaired, as a means to find websites which are more suitable for them.

At least that’s the theory. While I applaud Google for recognising the importance of website accessibility, the results do leave a bit to be desired, judging from my test queries. Analysing the accessibility of a site via any automated tool is always going to have its limitations, as it really requires a process of manual checking, but the top results returned by the Google Accessibility Search don’t really seem to show any great examples of accessibility, nor are they that different from the normal Google search.

It would be interesting to find out what factors Google is taking into account when deciding the rankings (hey, isn’t it always!) but this appears to be a simple filter applied to the existing algorithm.

It’s a great idea though, and I really hope they extend this idea to factor web accessibility into the main search rankings, because once companies and organisations see a ROI for creating accessible websites, it’ll give them that much needed extra incentive.

Anyway, check out the Google Accessible Search.