Last week, Google announced that its Book Search would be available for iPhone and other mobile device users. I like to read, so I thought I would see how it works and how accessible it is. I looked at another e-book reader, Stanza, in an earlier post, so I will look at the differences.

As noted in the NY Times article on the accouncement, Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones, the key feature is the use of text rather than images.

Unlike the version of Google Book Search for PCs, which displays scanned images of book pages, the mobile version simply displays text, allowing users to download printed material more quickly over wireless networks.

[PC Workd also has a good summary of the announcment.] Google has done this for the same reason as Adobe does in its Reflow command, using text allows the text to be reformatted easily for different screens and devices. Using text has a great side benefit as well, making the text accessible to accessibility modifications and to screen readers. I have never been able to use Google Book Search on my computer since the images are not amenable to my color and font scheme modifications.

So Google has taken a first step to making these books accessible on the iPhone. It did not get any further. Instead of writing an iPhone app, Google Book Search is accessible only through the built in web browser. The iPhone web browser does not allow any color scheme changes, so you can not improve readability with high contrast colors. More importantly, web pages specifically formatted for mobile pages, like Google Mobile Book Search, disable the iPhone’s zoom feature and use only a single standard font scheme. As you can see here, The opening of Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, the layout is aesthetic, but not accessible.

With Stanza’ iPhone reader app, you can easily change color and font schemes. Here is the opening of HG Wells’ The Time Machine with high contrast colors and a larger font. This is much easier to read.

In the end, there is good news. You can access Google Mobile Book Search from your computer using your regular browser. Doing so gives you all the advantage of the accessibility adaptations you have made to your computer plus the larger screen. This now makes all the books in Google’s database completely accessible at your desk. Here is Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography on my monitor using Accessibar to adjust the color scheme and NoSquint to zoom in.

To access Google Mobile Book Search, just point your mobile phone browser to http://books.google.com/m.

Read more iPhone accessibility reviews here.

Tags: accessibar, accessibility, adobe, amazon, book search, books, cell, color scheme, contrast, device, e book reader, E-Book, firefox, font, google, high contrast, iphone, mobile, mobile book, mobile device users, mobile version, ny times, ny times article, pc workd, readability, reader, reading, screen readers, stanza, text, web, web page, zoom

This entry was posted on February 11, 2009 at 7:04 am and is filed under large print. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.