Search engine for blind people
p2p news / p2pnet: T.V. Raman, blinded by childhood glaucoma, has come up with Accessible Search, an experimental Google engine meant to deliver results for people with sight problems.
Most visually impaired surf the Internet using screen readers to convert text and graphics into audio, says the San Francisco Chronicle. That used to be relatively easy, but now sites have added all kinds of fancy bells and whistles such as streaming graphics and video that trip up these screen readers. Google’s new search engine hopes to weed out hard-to-read pages, Raman says.
And the biggest problems comes from captchas, Those squiggly words you see on a Web page that act as a security measure to keep out spammers, says the story, going on:
Google finally added audio to their word verification system in April. It also has tackled other problems such as making map directions more accessible to the visually impaired, Raman says.
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, Reuters has Raman, who worked for IBM Research before joining Google, saying.
“You get a lot of conflicting signals. But Accessible Search rates how, on balance, each Web page handles such issues and gives priority to pages that do the best job of balancing relevant data and solid design.
Google Accessible Search is built using Google Co-op technology, which the company recently introduced to enable organizations with specialized search systems that target information on specific topics such as health or food, adds the story.
“On the Internet, no one knows you’re not a dog!” – says Raman on his home page. “Nor even if you’re still the same dog!”
Raman’s work on auditory interfaces has been profiled inScientific American and he’s the author of Auditory User Interfaces, toward the speaking computer.
Also See:
San Francisco Chronicle – Google for the blind, July 19, 2006
Reuters – Google tests more accessible Web search for blind, July 20, 2006
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