Local search engines and accessibility

One of the recommendations from City University on the WAI Guidelines said:
- improve search design 

We have all noticed that W3C's own website, www.w3c.org, today uses Google as local search engine. I have started using Google myself as my own local search engine at my very small website www.smackthemouse.com/contents, why not, all my relevant pages are indexed by Google?

Why should people struggle with a new search engine at each website when Google or another major global seach engine can do the job even faster and better in most cases also locally? Why not use an interface users know already? This is certanly usability.

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?

We even have a web service, http://www.dentedreality.com.au/xoomle/, returning Google as XML, making it possible to present Google's result pages exactly as you want. Google itself has also made an API available for the public.

Best regards,
Jesper Tverskov

Received on Monday, 19 April 2004 16:35:14 UTC