Google Starts Accessible View Experiment

06 November, 2008 by Peter Verhoeven

Google has started an experiment to improve access to Google search by visually impaired. By only using the keyboard you can navigate through search results. Google also added a magnification lens that highlights the users selected search result.

Since launching Accessible Search, one of the most requested features has been support for low-vision users. While implementing the keyboard naviagation, google incorporated the magnification first introduced by Google Reader. The Google Accessible View only works with Firefox 3.

As user of a screen reader with support for full screen magnification I'm not very impressed by Google Accessible View.
My braille display and magnifier does not track the keyboard actions, like they do by pressing the TAB or SHIFT + TAB key to selecT a next or previous link.
The magnifier lens is realy too small to help people with low-vision.

Click here for more information about Google Accessible View

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