Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006, 4:34 am
Accessibility-Friendly Search Engines
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A mixed message is delivered to site visitors
S time goes by, the needs of the disabled are better realised. The Web becomes not only a mainstream phenomenon, but it is also a necessity. To many, banking, shopping and even social aspects or life are dependent on the Internet. Currently, search engines tend to concentrates on content, not on style and graphics, let alone validity of code or issues pertaining to accessibility. Might this change?
It would not be surprising if a search engine emerge , which only bothered with pages that are pure text or are built to possess good accessibility traits. Blind and handicapped people, for example, could opt for this niche-serving search engine. Large players such as Google have already catered for specific types of searches such as localised search (Google Local) and blog-exclusive search. Accessibility-type search may soon become a reality.
Tools such as The SEO Analyzer would perhaps be valuable for ranking sites. Perhaps incorporating modules such as these into crawlers is a worthwhile move. Moreover, rather than separating the engine types altogether, the user could tick a box that says ‘display only lean, stripped-down pages’1 or ‘rank pages for accessibility and sort by quality’. This will encourage better Web standards and open ‘HTTP cyberspace’ to a larger audience.
1 This exists already, I suspect. Page size in the results page provides a clue as well.
January 3rd, 2006 at 10:36 am
Arguably if search brownie points become available for pure accessibility then sites will offer all-text alternatives of themselves. Cheering news for the articulate copywriter!
January 4th, 2006 at 4:36 am
Yes, I used to be in favour of all-text content. I made text versions for easier accessibility, but that was several years ago.
Stylesheets should take care of much of the versatilitynow. For example, try disabling styles in this page altogether. Content is separate from the layout (almost).