SAN FRANCISCO - Search behemoth Google Inc took a giant step towards making the Internet universally accessible as it announced that it is testing a new version of its search system called Accessible Search. This option is designed to make Internet navigation easier for the blind or the visually impaired.
The feature is available at http://labs.google.com/accessible. It uses Google's page ranking systems to display the suitability of the sites and additionally informs the user if the site is accessible. T.V. Raman, a research scientist at Google, who heads the project, is blind. He said his project focuses on solving issues related to page layout, the quality of design as well as the organization of each page.
"I knew it was a hard problem," Raman said. "What did I discover by doing this project? It's an even harder problem than I anticipated." He added that complex graphical layouts make it difficult for a visually impaired person to navigate the web since he/she has to rely on screen magnifiers to look at a small section of a page. "You get a lot of conflicting signals," said Raman. "This is a very early experiment. We are just beginning to ask the right questions and we are beginning to scratch the surface with respect to getting the right answers."
Raman, who previously worked at IBM Research said that Google could eventually opt for a system where people with specific disabilities can customize the way they access the web. "Perhaps senior citizens who want a less busy interface or for people who are color blind," he said. "How accessible or how inaccessible a Web page, from a user's perspective, is a really relative question."
Analysts say if Google's experiment clicks then it is a huge step forward for universal acceptability. Joanmarie Diggs of Carroll Tech, an institute that works for making technology accessible for disabled people said, "If Google has indeed has developed an algorithm which accurately distinguishes accessible pages from the inaccessible ones, they could use their tremendous influence for good by integrating this new algorithm into their page ranking scheme."
He added that for web sites to be popular on Google, they would need to be more accessible, "If Google did that, then I bet the world would start thinking about accessibility a lot more than they currently do. And that would be good for everyone."
