On Tuesday Google released Google Accessible Search, a Google Labs product aimed at giving preference to pages that are optimized for blind users. In keeping with Google’s vision this is an attempt to prode web sites to adhere to the accessibilty guidelines set by the W3C.

When I first heard about it, I was pretty excited because an accessible version of Google is something that we have heard a lot of people asking about this year. This however on the surface appears to be a case of do as I say not as I do. If you take a look at the SERPs on Accessible Search they are a mishmash of font, br and table tags not to mention the deprecated center tag. The search box doesn’t utilize labels and the page doesn’t have a DOCTYPE and isn’t semantic.

All that aside I am glad to see Google making accessibility play a bigger role in their ranking algorithm. In a perfect world all the Google SERPs would be accessible and pages that are semantic and accessible would rank higher than those that aren’t. Here are some things (not exhaustive) I thought of that Google should consider:

1. Accessibility is not just about blind users. This engine should take into account all other types of accessibility - this would include penalizing pages that are hard to understand because more focus is given to making those pages visible to search engines rather than making them readable for people who may have a cognitive disorder.
2. What exactly are they looking for. The criteria is not clear. A quick glance let’s me know that Google is looking for sites that are not using tables,  use css( even thought the ranking here doesn’t seem clear).  When checking for accessibilty you can’t judge everything by looking at the code (e.g color, clarity of language).
3. Be an example. Google could have a tremendous effect on the number of people who understand and build accessible pages. They could do this simply by make their pages adhere to the standards they are promoting.
4. Accessibility is not just for the disabled. I still don’t think people get this. Accessible can mean accessible to machines, browsers, portable devices. Don’t separate accessible search onto a separate engine. Integrate it directly into the main search - make the results viewable on a PDA, on a phone…whatever.
5. While you’re at it…start using Microformats. Creating a microformat for Adwords, local search listing and any other tidbits they plan to use in the page would be a great idea. I would mid being able to see contextual adword listings in a side bar based on the page I am on.

Update: With the new release of Firefox 2 coming up, maybe they could incorporate a signal for when a site is using Microsummaries.