Google Labs Accessible Search is open to the public. A few days ago T.V. Raman, research scientist in charge, announced the beta debut with a post in Google’s official blog. Have you taken a peek yet?

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. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op’s technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.

“Distractions,” can be information overload. A well organized, link-dense page like www.cnet.com contains about 350 links. The Yahoo! home page has about 150 links. Screen reader users looking for an email link have a lot of listening to do before finding a likely candidate. Visually oriented visitors can skim groups of links without reading every item, unless they’re using a magnifier to read word-by-word.

Favoring accessible pages without producing less targeted results will be a challenge. A quick look at results from Google’s Accessible Search reveals an ad-free results page, with a tendency to push down targeted results in favor of accessibility. For instance, a Google Accessible Search for braille puts Wikipedia’s braille page on top, ahead of the authoritative source material that Wikipedia documents.

Google is to be commended for giving accessibility focused attention. However, a separate accessible search must serve a different function than Google’s Special Searches, which narrow searches for the likes of Linux, Microsoft and the US government. The interests of people with a need for accessibility are not focused on accessible sites. As illustrated by the slogan “human rights are not special rights,” accessibility is a basic human need important to all of us; vision is a facet of the whole.

Imagine if, instead of an exclusively separate accessible search, Google gradually added accessibility considerations into their regular SERPs. Large commercial ventures, supposedly serving the general public, could be encouraged to see accessible design as a handy SEO tool. I doubt that content-dense pages containing diverse search terms could be supplanted; the long tail is becoming a force of nature. And, accessibility can be a workhorse in its own right. Perhaps sites could find a way to use programming or style sheets to create easily accessible content modules. Single-topic pages with simplified navigation could display nicely on mobiles. Google’s evolving technology has helped spawn an entire search marketing industry. Who knows what else is around the bend?

Right now we have the unveiling of a beta tool, available for public trial and comment. Kudos to Google and Dr. Raman for opening this door.

Accessible Search merits watching!

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