Experimenting with Accessible Google Search Results

Google Experimental Search: Accessible View

Google Experimental Search has a great experiment for the visually impaired. Accessible View is one of several experimental ways to access Google search results. The first key feature of Accessible View is keyboard navigation. Second, the selected search result is magnified for easier viewing. There is automatic integration with your screen reader or talking browser.

I have been testing it out for a few days now. The magnified selection is great, but I also have become a big fan of the keyboard shortcuts. The feature is easy to turn on and off through the Google Experimental Search site. Here is a sample of the keyboard shortcuts:

Key	Action
j or DOWN	Selects the next item.
k or UP	Selects the previous item.
<Enter>	Opens the selected result.
=	Magnifies current item
A	Switches to Accessible Search Results
W	Switches to regular Web Search Results

Currently, this feature is limited to the Firefox 3 web browser , though nagnification already works with Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

Turn on Google Experimental Search‘s Accesssible View and let me konw what you think.

Tags: accessibility, accessible view, experimental search, google, google search, keyboard navigation, keyboard shortcuts, search

This entry was posted on May 4, 2009 at 9:25 am and is filed under large print. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.