Google Accessible Search
Google Accessible Search is a search tool for the visually impaired that re-orders search results based on how accessible they are. Web pages that are inaccessible are not filtered out completely but may see there positions tumble.
Although still in beta, it is widely predicted that Google Accessible Search technology will be used to enhance Google's standard search in the near future. As the search giant puts it "Google's overall mission is to better organize the world's information and make it universally accessible".
Accessible Search is a wake up call for every commercial website, large or small, to step up and make their content readable, accessible and standards compliant in order to reach the widest possible audience.
A New Order
After testing Google Accessible Search extensively we found that rankings do change, sometimes significantly. Sites that were constructed with accessibility in mind move up considerably in rankings.
Compare Google's main results to Accessible results.
Here are some searches we discovered that show significant differences:
We do not 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.
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--that is, pages with few visual distractions, and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off.
Your Legal Responsibility
Under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), you are legally obliged to ensure that your website is accessible to blind and disabled users. However the act fails to provide any specific information about what the law requires you to do to make a website accessible.
To add to the confusion, the Disability Rights Commission and the Royal National Institute for the Blind have no specific information regarding what a website needs to do in order to meet legal requirements.
In Great Britain, Part 3 of the DDA requires providers of goods, facilities and services to avoid the less favorable treatment of disabled people and also to make reasonable adjustments, including the provision of auxiliary aids and services, to any practices, policies or procedures which make it unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of the services they provide. Insofar as a website in itself constitutes a service, or is the primary medium for the delivery of a service, it will therefore be covered by Part 3 of the Act.
Disability Rights Commission
Section 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act, referred to above, came into force in October 1999 and the Code of Practice for this section was published in May 2002. This means that the majority of UK websites have been breaking the law for over six years.
Can you be Sued
The RNIB raised accessibility issues with two large companies who, in exchange for anonymity and the prospect of legal action, resolved the problems.
The Disability Rights Commission have warned that companies will face legal action under Section 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act if they fail to make websites accessible for people with disabilities. The stern warning comes with a threat of unlimited compensation payments.
It's widely accepted that its only a matter of time until a case finally makes it to a UK court. There are already legal precedents in place, the Sydney Olympics Organising Committee were successfully sued in 2000 and Ramada.com and Priceline.com in 2002.
Make Your Site Accessible, Future Proof Your Search Engine Rankings And Stay Out Of Jail
Recommendations on how to make a website more usable and accessible include:
- Provide "skip navigation"that allows users to skip over navigation links.
- If your documents use style sheets ensure they are readable without their associated style sheet.
- A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content). A blank alt="" can be used for images that do not carry important information.
For more recomendations read W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Adherence to W3C's Guidelines is one way of ensuring that your site is universally accessible.
keep Web pages easy to read, avoiding visual clutter -- especially extraneous content -- and ensure 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.
Conclusion
People with disabilities are consumers too, in the UK there are 8.6 million registered disabled people (equates to 14% of the population). Google's Accessible Search has raised the awerenes of the business, moral and legal imperative to get it right and the perils of getting it wrong.
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