Re: Local search engines and accessibility

Jesper Tverskov writes:
> One of the recommendations from City University on the WAI Guidelines said:
> - improve search design 
<content trimmed/>
> Now, from the point of view of accessibility, when a website's pages are indexed by Google, wouldn't it be easier for people with disabilities to use a seach engine they are already used to use? Should we actively promote the use of search engines like Google as local seach engine at any major website, if the pages are already indexed by Google?

Matthew Smith replies:

Whilst I think that Google has a great product, I do not think it in the best 
interests of accessibility, or indeed of a stable infrastructure, to standardise 
on a single, proprietary solution.

If Google should fail as a company (or start charging excessively for the Site 
Search service), if everyone were using it, the entire concept of Site Search 
would drop into a vacuum.

Were Google an Open Source project, with a distributed infrastructure (ie: not 
all owned by Google), I might feel otherwise.

Having said this, widespread use of the Google "look and feel" may be helpful by 
providing a consistent, familiar, interface IF Google has truly the paragon of 
accessible search interfaces.

Cheers

M

-- 
Matthew Smith
Kadina Business Consultancy
South Australia
http://www.kbc.net.au

Received on Monday, 19 April 2004 22:13:25 UTC