Google tests accessible web search for blind

July 20, 2006

Google has begun a new version of its search system for blind or visually impaired, for finding web information faster and easier.

Currently Google’s experimental software is available at http://labs.google.com/ Accessible Search, Google uses the standard page-ranking system to show the results of searches.

Complex, graphical designs that pack a lot of information onto large Web pages fare poorly when a low vision user relies on screen magnifiers that must expand small sections of a computer screen and make them huge, the researcher of Google Labs said.

A blind or dyslexic user of a screen reader that converts text into spoken words using a synthesized voice would waste a lot of time skipping over extraneous page content, he noted.

Currently still in Google Labs available, hopefully for blind and impaired people this will be incorporated in Google Search soon.