More accessibility features in Android 1.6

<span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see — tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.</span><br /><br />The most recent release of Android 1.6, a.k.a. Donut, introduces accessibility features designed to make Android apps more widely usable by blind and low-vision users. In brief, Android 1.6 includes a built-in screenreader and <a href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/search/label/Text-to-Speech">text-to-speech</a> (TTS) engine which make it possible to use most Android applications, as well as all of Android's default UI, when not looking at the screen.<br /><br />Android-powered devices with Android 1.6 and future software versions will include the following accessibility enhancements:<br /><ul><li>Text-to-Speech (TTS) is now bundled with the Android platform. The platform comes with voices for English (U.S. and U.K.), French, Italian, Spanish and German.</li><li>A standardized Text To Speech API is part of the Android SDK, and this enables developers to create high-quality talking applications.</li><li>Starting with Android 1.6, the Android platform includes a set of easy to use accessibility APIs that make it possible to create accessibility aids such as screenreaders for the blind.</li><li>Application authors can easily ensure that their applications remain usable by blind and visually impaired users by ensuring that all parts of the user interface are reachable via the trackball; and all image controls have associated textual metadata.</li><li>Starting with Android 1.6, the Android platform comes with applications that provide spoken, auditory (non-speech sounds) and haptic (vibration) feedback. Named TalkBack, SoundBack and KickBack, these applications are available via the Settings > Accessibility menu.</li><li>In addition, <a href="http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/">project Eyes-Free</a> (which includes accessibility tools such as TalkBack) provides several UI enhancements for using touch-screen input. Many of these <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html">innovations</a> are available via Android Market and are already being heavily used. We believe these eyes-free tools will serve our users with special needs as well.</li></ul>You can turn on the accessibility features by going to Settings --> Accessibility and checking the box "Accessibility". While the web browser and browser-based applications do not yet "talk" using these enhancements, we're working on them for upcoming releases. Check out this <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/10/talkback-open-source-screenreader-for.html">Google Open Source Blog post</a> for more details, and stay tuned to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/eyesfreeandroid">eyes-free channel on YouTube</a> for step-by-step demonstrations on configuring and using accessibility support on Android.<span class="byline-author"><br /></span>

More accessibility features in Android 1.6

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see — tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.The most…

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A new home for accessibility at Google

Information access is at the core of <a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/facts.html">Google’s mission</a>, which is why we work to make the world's content available to people with disabilities, such as blindness, visual impairment, color deficiency, deafness, hearing loss and limited dexterity. Building accessible products isn't only the right thing to do, it also opens up Google services to very significant populations of people. According to the United Nations, <a href="http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18">650 million people</a> live with a disability, which makes them the world's largest minority.<br /><br />We regularly develop and release accessibility features and improvements. Sometimes these are snazzy new applications like the a new <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/09/talking-rss-reader-for-android.html">talking RSS reader</a> for Android devices. Other times the changes aren't flashy, but they're still important, such as our recent incremental improvements to <a href="http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/accessibility#TOC-WAI-ARIA-Support">WAI-ARIA support in Google Chrome</a> (adding support for ARIA roles and labels). We also work on more foundational research to improve customization and access for our users, such as <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/">AxsJax</a> (an Open Source framework for injecting usability enhancements into Web 2.0 applications).<br /><br />We've <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/accessibility">written frequently</a> about accessibility on our various blogs and help forums, but this information has never been easily accessible (pun intended) in one central place. This week we've launched a handy new website for Accessibility at Google to pull all our existing resources together: <a href="http://www.google.com/accessibility/">www.google.com/accessibility</a>. Here you can follow the latest accessibility updates from our blogs, find resources from our help center, participate in a discussion group, or send us your feedback and feature requests. Around here, we often say, "launch early and iterate" — meaning, get something out the door, get feedback, and then improve it. In that tradition, our accessibility website is pretty simple, and we expect this site to be the first of many iterations. We're excited about the possibilities.<br /><br />The thing we're most excited about is getting <a href="https://services.google.com/fb/forms/accessibility/">your feedback</a> about Google products and services so we can make them better for the future. Take a look and let us know what you think.<br /><br />Posted by Jonas Klink, Accessibility Product Manager

A new home for accessibility at Google

Information access is at the core of Google’s mission, which is why we work to make the world's content available to people with disabilities, such as blindness, visual impairment, color deficiency, d…

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An ARIA for Google Moderator

<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span></span><br /><br />Google-AxsJAX was launched in late 2007 as a library for access-enabling Web-2.0 applications. Since then, we have released accessibility enhancements for many Web-2.0 applications via the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/">AxsJAX site</a> as early experiments that have eventually graduated into full-fledged products. Just recently we <a title="posted" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/aria-for-google-calendar-finance-and.html" id="o9.g">posted</a> about using the AxsJAX library to provide ARIA enhancements for Google Calendar, Google Finance and Google News. Now we are happy to share an early AxsJAX extension for <a title="Google Moderator" href="http://moderator.appspot.com/" id="v.:0">Google Moderator</a> that enables fluent eyes-free use of the tool.<br /><br />For details about AxsJAX enhancements, see the <a href="http://google-axsjax.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/docs/faq.html">AxsJAX FAQ</a>. Briefly, you need Firefox 3.0 and a screenreader that supports W3C ARIA to take advantage of these enhancements. Users who do not have a screenreader installed can most easily experience the results by installing <a href="http://www.clcworld.net/">Fire Vox</a>, a freely available self-voicing extension for Firefox.<br /><br />You can activate the AxsJAX enhancement for Google Moderator either by clicking on the link that says "Click here for ARIA enhanced Google Moderator" or by <a style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" title="accessing the ARIA-enhanced version directly" href="http://moderator.appspot.com/?axs#16/e=1a26" id="xuh-">accessing the ARIA-enhanced version directly</a>. After enabling the enhancement, you can use Google Moderator via the keyboard, with all user interaction producing spoken feedback via W3C ARIA.<br /><br />Here is a brief overview of the experience:<br /><br />1. The user interface is divided into logical panes — one listing topic areas, and the other listing questions on a given topic. At times (e.g., before a meeting), you may find an additional <span style="font-style: italic;">Featured Question</span> pane that shows a randomly selected question that you can vote on.<br />2. Users can ask new questions under a given topic, or give a thumbs-up/thumbs-down to questions that have already been asked.<br />3. Use the <u>left</u> and <u>right</u> arrow keys to switch between the two panes. You hear the title of the selected pane as you switch.<br />4. Use <u>up</u> and <u>down</u> arrows to navigate among the items in the selected pane. As you navigate, you hear the current item.<br />5. Hit <u>enter</u> to select the current item.<br />6. The current item can be magnified by repeatedly pressing the <u>+</u> (or <u>=</u>) key. To reduce magnification, press the <u>-</u> key.<br />7. When navigating the questions in a given topic, hit <u>y</u> or <u>n</u> to vote a question up or down.<br />8. When navigating items in the topic pane, hit <u>a</u> to ask a question. Once you confirm your request to post the question, it will show up in the list of questions for that topic so that others can vote that question up or down.<br /><br />Please visit the <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/accessible/?pli=1">Google Group for accessibility</a> to provide feedback. This AxsJAX extension is still a work in progress, so we'd love to hear from you as we continue to work out the kinks.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update on 4/14:</span> Clarified in the second and third paragraphs that you do not need to install this enhancement. You can access it directly from Google Moderator.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Posted by T. V. Raman, Research Scientist, and Charles L. Chen, Software Engineer</span>

An ARIA for Google Moderator

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.G…

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ARIA for Google Calendar, Finance and News: In praise of timely information access

<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own </span><a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">T.V. Raman</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.<br /></span><br />In our continued efforts to make Google applications more accessible, we have launched ARIA support for <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/accessible-view-aria-for-web-search.html">several Google applications</a> over the last few months. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAI-ARIA">W3C ARIA</a> is a set of HTML DOM properties that enables adaptive technologies like screenreaders to work better with dynamic web applications. As with previous ARIA-enabled Google solutions, screenreader users can now switch on ARIA support in the following applications by activating an invisible Enable Screenreader Support link. Alternatively, simply browse to the links in this blog with a supporting screenreader and Firefox 3.0 to experience the interface enhancements. If you do not have a screenreader installed, but are curious to experience what eyes-free interaction with these applications feels like, we recommend the freely downloadable Firefox enhancement <a href="http://www.clcworld.net/">Fire Vox by Charles Chen</a>.<br /><ol><li><a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/render?axs=1">Google Calendar</a>: The ARIA-enhanced Google Calendar enables speech-enabled access to the day view in Google Calendar. You can use the keyboard to move through events, move through the days of the week, as well as to cycle through your various calendars. As you work with the calendar, the application raises appropriate DOM events through W3C ARIA to invoke the relevant spoken feedback through the screenreader.</li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/finance?axs=1">Google Finance</a>: The Finance page can be viewed as a set of logical panes, with related content appearing as items in each pane. The ARIA-enhanced version of Google Finance enables you to switch panes, and navigate the current pane with the arrow keys. Navigation produces spoken feedback through the screenreader. In addition, Google Finance provides several power user tools, including a stock screener, all of which are speech-enabled through ARIA. These power user tools provide interesting examples for Web developers experimenting with ARIA. (ARIA support for Finance was developed by intern Svetoslav Ganov as his starter project.)</li><li><a href="http://news.google.com/?axs=true">Google News</a>: Finally, we have added ARIA support to enable rapid eyes-free access to Google News. These enhancements follow the same pattern as seen earlier for Google Finance, and the ability to navigate between the different views provided by Google News, (e.g., World News vs Sports enables rapid access to the large volume of news that is accessible via the Google News interface).</li></ol>As with all of our ARIA-enhanced services, you can obtain additional help by pressing the <u>?</u> key to hear the available list of shortcuts. If you're interested in discussing these enhancements, visit the <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/accessible/">Google Group for accessibility</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by T. V. Raman, Research Scientist, and Charles L. Chen, Software Engineer</span>

ARIA for Google Calendar, Finance and News: In praise of timely information access

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.In our …

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Accessible View: An ARIA for web search

<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.</span></span><br /><br />In the spirit of a <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/search-experiments-large-and-small.html">recent post</a> discussing some of our search experiments, last week we launched an opt-in search experiment we're calling <a href="http://www.google.com/experimental/">Accessible View</a>, which makes it easy to navigate search results using only the keyboard. Like many of our recent accessibility-related enhancements, this experiment is built using the basic functionality provided by W3C ARIA and <a href="http://google-axsjax.googlecode.com/">Google-AxsJAX</a>, an evolving set of HTML DOM properties that enable adaptive technologies to work better with AJAX-style applications.<br /><br />The Accessible View experiment is another step toward making our search results more accessible for everyone. In July 2006, we launched <a href="http://labs.google.com/accessible/">Accessible Search</a> on Google Labs, where the goal was to help visually impaired users find content that worked well with adaptive technologies. We continue to refine and tune the ranking on Accessible Search. And with Accessible View, users can easily toggle between regular Google search results and Accessible Search results by using the 'A' and 'W' keys.<br /><br />When we designed the Accessible View interface, we first looked at how people used screen readers and other adaptive technologies when performing standard search-related tasks. We then asked how many of these actions we could eliminate to speed up the search process. The result: a set of keyboard shortcuts for effectively navigating the results page, and to arrange for the user's adaptive technology to speak the right information during navigation.<br /><br />We've also added a magnification lens that highlights the user's selected search result. Since launching Accessible Search, one of the most requested features has been support for low-vision users. While implementing the keyboard navigation described here, we incorporated the magnification lens first introduced by <a href="http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/05/reader-can-i-have-lens-with-that-please.html">Google Reader</a>.<br /><br />Bringing it all together, we implemented <a href="http://www.google.com/experimental">keyboard shortcuts</a> that extend what was originally pioneered by the keyboard shortcuts experiment. These shortcuts help users navigate through different parts of the results page with a minimal number of keystrokes. The left and right arrows cycle through the various categories of items on the page (e.g., results, ads, or search refinements), and the up and down arrow keys move through the current category. Power users can leave their hands on the home row by using the <u>h</u>, <u>j</u>, <u>k</u>, and <u>l</u> keys. In addition, we enable an infinite stream of results viewed through the <u>n</u> and <u>p</u> keys — so you can move through the results without getting disoriented by a page refresh after the first 10 results.<br /><br /><table><tbody><tr><td><b>Key</b></td><td><b>Behavior</b></td></tr><tr><td>j/k</td><td>next/previous result</td></tr><tr><td>n/p</td><td>next/previous result, scroll if necessary</td></tr><tr><td>enter</td><td>open current result</td></tr><tr><td>up/down</td><td>next/previous result</td></tr><tr><td>left/right</td><td>switch categories (results, ads, refinements)</td></tr><tr><td>a</td><td>jump to ads </td></tr><tr><td>A</td><td>switch to Accessible Search results</td></tr><tr><td>W</td><td>switch to default Google results</td></tr><tr><td>r</td><td>jump to related searches</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <br />Try out <a href="http://www.google.com/experimental/">the experiment</a> and give us <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/accessible/">your feedback</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist, and Charles L. Chen, Software Engineer</span>

Accessible View: An ARIA for web search

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.In the …

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Google Health feels accessible

<div> <div><div> <p><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.</span><br /></p><div> <p> Keeping track of personal health records using printed paper is painful at best for most users; as someone with a visual impairment, this is a show-stopper for me. As I begin paying more attention to my own health, I've come to realize first-hand how hard it is at present to track one's health using the means that traditional health care programs provide. </p> <p> As luck would have it, Google Health arrived at around the same time that I started dealing with these issues, and focusing on the usability of Google Health from the perspective of someone who cannot see was therefore a no-brainer. Today, we are launching a version of <a href="http://www.google.com/health/accessible" target="_blank">Google Health</a> that has been augmented with several usability enhancements that aid users of screen readers and self-voicing browsers. These enhancements are implemented using <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/" target="_blank">W3C ARIA</a>, an emerging set of Web standards that make AJAX applications work smoothly with screen readers — see our related <a href="http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2008/10/by-t.html">post on the GWT blog</a> for details. With these enhancements, I can now easily navigate Google Health to not only manage my own health records; Google Health enables me to quickly research various relevant health conditions, track medications and do a myriad health-related tasks. </p> <p> Google Health gives me a single unified web interface to manage all of my health-related information. Kudos to the Google Health and GWT teams for creating an extremely useful and usable solution!</p><p><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span></p> </div></div></div></div>

Google Health feels accessible

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. …

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ARIA For Google Reader: In praise of timely information access

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.<br /><br /></span>The advent of RSS and ATOM feeds, and the creation of tools like <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/axs" target="_blank">Google Reader </a> for efficiently consuming content feeds, has vastly increased the amount of information we access every day. From the perspective of someone who cannot see, content feeds are one of the major innovations of the century. They give me direct access to the actual content without first having to dig through a lot of boilerplate visual layout as happens with websites. In addition, all of this content is now available from a single page with a consistent interface.<br /><br />Until now, I've enjoyed the benefits of <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/axs" target="_blank">Google Reader</a> using a <a href="http://emacspeak.blogspot.com/2007/03/emacs-client-for-google-services.html" target="_blank">custom client</a>. Today, we're happy to tell you that the "mainstream" Google Reader now works with off-the-shelf screenreaders, as well as <a href="http://www.clcworld.net/" target="_blank">Fire Vox</a>, the self-voicing extension to Firefox. This brings the benefits of content feeds and feed readers to the vast majority of visually impaired users.<br /><br />Google Reader has always had complete keyboard support. With the accessibility enhancements we've added, all user actions now produce the relevant spoken feedback via the user's adaptive technology of choice. This feedback is generated using <i>Accessible Rich Internet Applications</i> (<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-wai-aria-20080204/" target="_blank">WAI-ARIA</a>), an evolving standard for enhancing the accessibility of Web-2.0 applications. WAI-ARIA is supported at present by Firefox -- with future support forthcoming in other browsers. This is one of the primary advantages of building on open standards.<br /><br />We originally prototyped these features in Google Reader using the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/">AxsJAX</a> framework. After extensive testing of these enhancements, we've now integrated these into the mainstream product. See the <a href="http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/03/reader-and-aria-new-way-to-read.html">related post</a> on the Google Reader Blog for additional technical details.<br /><br />Looking forward to a better informed future for all!

ARIA For Google Reader: In praise of timely information access

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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Google Translation + Gmail help people communicate

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />Language barriers can be a primary source of accessibility problems on the web, and automatic translation, though not perfect, provides a useful solution. <p></p> <p> We recently made our machine translation technology accessible from within <a href="http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2007/12/merry-christmas-god-jul-and.html" target="_blank">Gmail and Google Talk</a>, which gives mail and IM users instant access to translation capabilities at the point where they might most need them, e.g., when communicating with friends and colleagues around the world. If you find yourself wanting to translate a few words or short phrase, you can IM an appropriate chat-bot to obtain an immediate translation. As an example, the Google translation bot for going from English to Chinese is available as <i><a href="mailto:en2zh@bot.talk.google.com" target="_blank">en2zh@bot.talk.google.com</a></i>. In general, translation bots are named using two-letter codes for the source and target language.<br /><br />Surfacing machine translation in this manner is a great example of how Web 2.0 mashups bring together useful services to create solutions that are bigger than the sum of their building blocks. I've blogged here in the past about the<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html" target="_blank"> potential presented by web mashups</a> for users with special needs. Using our work on <a href="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-axsjax-access-enabling-ajax.html" target="_blank">AxsJAX</a> to inject accessibility enhancements into Web applications, my officemate <a href="http://clcworld.net/" target="_blank">Charles Chen</a> and I recently augmented Google Talk to produce appropriate spoken feedback when used with adaptive technologies such as self-voicing browsers. </p> <p> The combination of machine translation, instant messaging and AxsJAX-enabled spoken output produces an interesting result that is <i>obvious</i> after the fact: when I use Google IM to message a translation bot, I now <i>hear</i> the result in the target language. This makes for a very interesting chat buddy -- one who can act as my personal interpreter!<br /><br />And let's not forget that little <a href="http://www.google.com/help/faq_translation.html#translink"><b>translate this page</b></a> within Google search results. Next time you find that some of the documents in your search results are non-English, try clicking on that translate link. You'll be able to specify the source and target languages to obtain an automatically generated translation. A nice thing about the translated page is that when you follow any links from that document, the newly retrieved document will be automatically translated. Thus, if you find an article in German that matches your query and you're an English speaker, you can translate from <b>de|en</b> (that's German to English using two letter language codes) and as you read the translated English version, following links from that document will result in their being automatically translated to English. </p>

Google Translation + Gmail help people communicate

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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Public transit made easy

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist<br /></span><br /><i>From time to time, our own </i><a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/"><i>T.V. Raman</i></a><i> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</i><br /><p> A little over a year ago, I blogged about <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/speech-friendly-textual-directions.html" id="r7wx" title="our simple textual directions">our simple textual directions</a> as an alternative to the popular graphical Google Maps interface. Those directions help me orient myself and learn my way around. But in the interest of safety -- my own and others! -- I choose not to drive and rely heavily on public transportation. </p> <p>Now that Maps has textual directions in place, it's easy to build on top of that interface to introduce new innovations that become immediately useful to someone like me. <a href="http://www.maps.google.com/transit">Google Transit</a> is a great example of this -- it helps me locate public transportation options and does so in the text format that I need. In addition, it offers several nice features to help me plan my trip:<br /></p><ul><li> I can specify the desired departure or arrival time.</li><li> It will show more than one trip choice, allowing some flexibility with respect to when I'd like to start.</li><li> It estimates the amount of walking required to get to a transit stop/station.</li><li> It identifies the length of waiting at each transit point.</li><li> It estimates the comparable cost of transportation options, where available.</li></ul><p>But these aren't the only benefits. Behind the scenes is the <a href="http://code.google.com/transit/spec/transit_feed_specification.html" target="_blank">Google Transit Feed Specification</a> (GTFS), an open data format used by public transit agencies to upload their data. <a title="Several agencies" href="http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/PublicFeeds" id="w5r9">Several agencies</a> are already using these public feeds. Though GTFS is never seen by commuters directly, it opens up a wealth of possibilities with respect to accessibility and alternative access, such as building custom user interfaces and specialized route guidance applications that are optimized for people with special needs. </p><p> Though we added this alternative view to enhance the accessibility of Google Maps for blind and low-vision users, we hope that everyone finds it a useful addition to your commute arsenal. So next time you use the Maps graphical interface, give its cousin, the simple textual directions, a try -- there might be times when you find yourself using it even if you can see.<br /></p> <p> And here's to ever more open data feeds from the various public transport agencies!<br /></p>

Public transit made easy

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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New Toolbar adds accessible features

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Jonas Klink, Software Engineer, Accessibility</span><br /><br />Last week Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20071212_toolbar.html">launched version 5</a> as a public beta. This version introduces a number of exciting features, such as making your Toolbar settings available from any computer that you log into with your Google Account, improved suggestions for broken links, as well as important changes that make Toolbar more accessible for assistive technology users.<br /><br />This release adds support for Windows Accessibility APIs (used by screen readers, etc.) and enables keyboard navigation and access. From inside a browser with Toolbar installed, the global shortcut Alt+G places your cursor in the Google Toolbar search box. If you're using a screen reader, you'll hear "Google Toolbar Search". Pressing the Tab key brings keyboard focus to the button placed immediately after the search box, and right and left arrow keys move focus between buttons. More information on keyboard access is documented in the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/search.py?query=accessibility&Action.Search=Search&ctx=en%3Asearchbox">Toolbar Help Center</a> (query 'accessibility').<br /><br />Version 5 comes as a part of our ongoing efforts to enhance accessibility in our client-side and web applications, which is a matter I hardly need to mention is very important. Personally, I see my work that went into the Toolbar as an important step forward, as the product reaches a very large number of users and enables everyone to gain quick access to a multitude of useful features, through a unified UI. Adding keyboard navigation and other features that enhance the ease of access to these features benefit everyone.<br /><br />We look forward to making further improvements to accessibility (including the installation process) in future releases. You can download the new Google Toolbar at <a href="http://toolbar.google.com/T5">http://toolbar.google.com/T5</a>.

New Toolbar adds accessible features

Posted by Jonas Klink, Software Engineer, AccessibilityLast week Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer launched version 5 as a public beta. This version introduces a number of exciting features, such …

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Accessibility mashups: AxsJAX fun with XKCD Comics

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.</span><br /><br />Earlier this year, I blogged about the potential presented by <a title="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html" target="_blank">accessibility mashups</a> with respect to delivering web interfaces that are optimized to a user's special needs. More recently, my office-mate Charles Chen and I blogged about our work on <a title="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-axsjax-access-enabling-ajax.html" href="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-axsjax-access-enabling-ajax.html" target="_blank">AxsJAX</a> as a framework for leveraging Web-2.0 for injecting accessibility enhancements into web applications.<br /><br />As we head into the holiday season, we decided it was time to have some fun and generate a few laughs based on what we've worked on during the year. As chance would have it, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Munroe">Randall Munroe</a>, the creator of the <a href="http://www.xkcd.com/" target="_blank">XKCD comic strip,</a> visited our Mountain View campus to give an <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24" com="" v="zJOS0sV2a24">extremely entertaining talk</a>. He even made a reference to <i>blind hacker geeks</i>! So the temptation was too hard to resist. We <b>had</b> to speech-enable his comic strip.<br /><br />The XKCD comics are highly visual, with a short comment from the author accompanying many of the episodes. Having a detailed written description that is visible to everyone would spoil the comic for the average user; part of the fun is to understand the jokes purely from the sketches. At the same time, notice that indexing and searching online comics runs into the same challenge that blind users face: to be able to locate past episodes, one needs access to textual transcripts that capture the essence of each sketch. To help with the latter, fans of online comics like XKCD have created a <a title="http://www.ohnorobot.com" href="http://www.ohnorobot.com/" target="_blank">search engine</a> devoted to indexing comic strips, replete with full text transcriptions. This is an example of a social Web application where fans can transcribe their favorite comics including XKCD.<br /><br />In the Web 1.0 world, I would have to pull up an XKCD episode, then go to the site containing the transcripts, and finally find the associated transcript in order to make sense of the comic. But this is exactly where Web 2.0 mashups excel; mashups are all about bringing data from multiple Web sources into a single integrated view. Once we realized this, we were able to AxsJAX the XKCD site with a small amount of code. Now, I can browse to the XKCD comic site, and listen to each episode -- with the underlying AxsJAX-based mashup taking care of the minutiae of retrieving the relevant transcript and integrating it into the comic strip.<br /><br />This approach leverages all that is powerful about web-based applications: <p></p> <ul><li>Distributed accessibility --- the XKCD author does not need to create the transcripts. </li><li>Transcripts can be integrated from across the web. </li><li>The accessibility enhancements do not spoil the fun for XKCD readers in general. </li><li>And with Open Source self-voicing plugins like <a title="http://firevox.clcworld.net" href="http://firevox.clcworld.net/" target="_blank">Fire Vox</a>, every XKCD user can listen to the strip when desired. </li></ul>

Accessibility mashups: AxsJAX fun with XKCD Comics

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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First year of Google WiFi

<span class="byline-author">By Minnie Ingersoll, Chris Sacca & Larry Alder, Alternative Access Team</span><br /><br />Our Mountain View WiFi network just celebrated its <a title="first anniversary" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/free-citywide-wifi-in-mountain-view.html" id="g7.:">first anniversary</a>, and we thought you'd appreciate a few data points. The network's 400+ mesh routers <a href="http://wifi.google.com/city/mv/apmap.html">cover about 12 square miles</a> and 25,000 homes to serve approximately 15,000 unique users each <strike>week</strike> <span style="font-weight: bold;">month</span>. Since the beginning of 2007, traffic has grown almost 10 percent each month, and the network now handles over 300 gigabytes of data each day, sent to over 100 distinct types of WiFi devices. Virtually the entire city has been taking advantage of the network, with 95 percent of the mesh routers being used on any given day.<br /><br />Around the globe and across the U. S., many people are still not able to access the online services that are increasingly helpful, if not essential, tools for our daily lives. This is why we're committed to promoting alternative platforms for people to access the web, no matter where you are, what you're doing or what device you're using.<br /><br />For those who have been following <a href="https://home.feather.net/sanfrancisco" id="c03t">the effort</a> to create a free wireless network in San Francisco, we continue to hope that EarthLink and The City will find a way to enable all San Franciscans to enjoy the free WiFi network they deserve. On a broader scale, we hope that the success of the Mountain View model will encourage others to think creatively about how to address access issues in many other communities.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Update:</span> </span>Corrected usage from "week" to "month."

First year of Google WiFi

By Minnie Ingersoll, Chris Sacca & Larry Alder, Alternative Access TeamOur Mountain View WiFi network just celebrated its first anniversary, and we thought you'd appreciate a few data points. The netw…

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Overview of our accessible services

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />We provide a wide variety of services that are mostly accessed with a web browser. People visit Google from a large number of browsers and platforms; in addition, we also understand that <i>every</i> user is special and may have special needs. Accessibility at Google is about making sure that our services work well for <i>all</i> our users -- independent of your needs and abilities at any given time. <p></p> <p>Web search, our primary service, has a very simple interface and has always been accessible from a variety of user environments. Newer services that present highly interactive interfaces continue to present accessibility challenges when used with specialized adaptive technologies such as screenreaders. We are committed to finding accessibility solutions that make our services work better for everyone who visits.<br /><br />Here's a list of our accessibility-related services and a few solutions to some accessibility challenges. <a title="http://www.google.com" href="http://www.google.com/"><br /></a></p><ul><li><a title="http://www.google.com" href="http://www.google.com/">Web Search</a>: Result pages include headers to delineate logical sections.<a title="http://labs.google.com/accessible" href="http://labs.google.com/accessible"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://labs.google.com/accessible" href="http://labs.google.com/accessible">Accessible Search</a>: Promotes results that are accessible.<a title="http://books.google.com/books" href="http://books.google.com/books"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://books.google.com/books" href="http://books.google.com/books">Book Search</a>: Full-text access to public-domain works.<a title="http://mail.google.com/mail/h/" href="http://mail.google.com/mail/h/"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://mail.google.com/mail/h/" href="http://mail.google.com/mail/h/">Gmail</a>: A simple yet functional HTML mode that works well with screenreaders.<a title="http://mail.google.com/mail/x/" href="http://mail.google.com/mail/x/"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://mail.google.com/mail/x/" href="http://mail.google.com/mail/x/">Gmail Mobile</a>: A lightweight user interface that is also speech-friendly.<a title="http://maps.google.com/?output=html" href="http://maps.google.com/?output=html"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://maps.google.com/?output=html" href="http://maps.google.com/?output=html">Google Maps</a>: Easy-to-use textual directions.<a title="https://www.google.com/calendar/m?output=xhtml" href="https://www.google.com/calendar/m?output=xhtml"><br /></a></li><li><a title="https://www.google.com/calendar/m?output=xhtml" href="https://www.google.com/calendar/m?output=xhtml">Calendar</a>: A functional, yet speech-friendly user interface.<a title="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/audio-captchas-when-visual-images-are.html" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/audio-captchas-when-visual-images-are.html"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/audio-captchas-when-visual-images-are.html" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/audio-captchas-when-visual-images-are.html">Audio Captchas</a>: All services that use Google Accounts provide an audio alternative for the visual challenge-response tests that are used to distinguish humans from machines.<a title="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/viewing-web-through-mobile-lens.html" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/viewing-web-through-mobile-lens.html"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/viewing-web-through-mobile-lens.html" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/viewing-web-through-mobile-lens.html">Mobile Transcoder</a>: A <i>mobile lens</i> for viewing the web that produces accessible views.<a title="http://video.google.com/videocaptioned" href="http://video.google.com/videocaptioned"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://video.google.com/videocaptioned" href="http://video.google.com/videocaptioned">Google Video</a>: Allows uploaded videos to contain captions/subtitles in multiple languages for viewers who are hearing-impaired or unfamiliar with the original language.<a title="http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml" href="http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml" href="http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml">Google Talk</a>: IM clients inside a web browser can pose accessibility challenges, but the use of the open Jabber API means that Google users can choose from a variety of Jabber clients, many of which work well with adaptive technologies.<a title="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html"><br /></a></li><li><a title="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html">Web APIs</a>: Many Google services offer high-level web APIs that aid in authoring mashups; this provides a means for creating highly customized accessible views.</li><li><a href="http://labs.google.com/goog411/">1-800-GOOG-411</a>: Here's an exception to the rule that we deliver most things through a web browser. Our experimental Voice Local Search service lets anyone who can speak into a phone search for a local business by name or category; get connected to the business free of charge; get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone. (Just say "text message".)</li></ul>Finally, many Google services such as <a title="http://scholar.google.com" href="http://scholar.google.com/">Google Scholar</a>, <a title="http://news.google.com" href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a>, <a title="http://www.blogger.com" href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a> and <a title="http://www.google.com/products" href="http://www.google.com/products">Google Product Search</a> work out of the box. While today's screenreaders can hit some bumps on the road when using more advanced features in these products, these web interfaces degrade gracefully to provide a functional interface. <p>If any of this interests you, we invite you to participate in our <a title="http://groups.google.com/group/accessible/" href="http://groups.google.com/group/accessible/">user community</a>. Please tell us what works well, share your own tips on using Google services, and make sure to tell us what could be made even better.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Update: </span>Added info on 1-800-GOOG-411.<br /></p> <p class="author"> <a title="mailto:raman@google.com" href="mailto:raman@google.com"><raman@google.com></raman@google.com></a> </p> <p class="date"><br /></p>

Overview of our accessible services

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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Ever more books to read

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.</span><br /><br />As a book lover, I couldn't have been more excited by the advent of electronic books in the early 90s. And with the rise of the Internet, the possibility of being able to discover books online was really exciting.<br /><br />I work on a project at Google called <a href="http://labs.google.com/accessible/">Google Accessible Search</a>, which helps promote results that are more accessible to visually impaired users. Building on that work is today's release of accessible public domain works through <a href="http://www.books.google.com/">Google Book Search</a>. It's opening up hundreds of thousands of books to people who use adaptive technologies such as speech output, screen readers, and Braille displays.<br /><br />I'm extremely enthusiastic about many of our efforts at Google, which ultimately have the potential to make the experience of accessing information for visually impaired users just as easy as it is for those with sight. My reading used to be determined by what was available in a form I could read. But today it's a question of using Google effectively so that I can find the <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span> thing to read. Today's Book Search launch is an excellent example of how technology is truly democratizing access to the world's information.<br /><br />If you have feedback about Google's accessibility services, <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/accessible/">join our group</a> to share tips on what works well and what could be made better.

Ever more books to read

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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Google and open source OCR

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />As someone who cannot see, I prefer to live in a mostly paperless world. This means ruthlessly turning every piece of paper that enters my life into a set of bits that I can process digitally. I scan in everything. Until now, I have relied on commercial OCR packages to convert these images into readable text. OCR is perhaps one of the areas where the benefits of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law">Moore's Law</a> are most evident; today, OCR can do remarkably well when handed a page image. Until now, my only dissatisfaction with the status quo in this area has been that commercial OCR engines afford me little flexibility with respect to training them to do better on documents that are specific to me.<br /><br />The advent of our own open source OCR initiative, <a href="http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/">OCRopus</a> (source code: <a href="http://ocropus.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/">Ocropus Sources</a>) is a welcome change in this regard. I introduced support for <a href="http://code.google.com/p/emacspeak">OCRopus in Emacspeak</a> recently, and the HTML output this produces compares favorably with output from commercial OCR engines, provided you place the page at the right orientation on the scanner. OCRopus' extensibility, and the ability to express the OCR as a structured HTML document makes it an ideal starting point for producing rich spoken output. The possibilities are enormous for people being able to collectively train, customize and improve an OCR engine.

Google and open source OCR

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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Spelling For Muggles

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />English spelling is far from being phonetic -- and commonly-used proper nouns make the problem even more complex. Often the final arbiter is "it looks correct." Try writing "success" with one trailing "s" and you'll see what I mean.<br /><br />This final aspect of spelling -- it "looks wrong" -- can be a serious challenge when one cannot see. I can spell well in English, and for regular English text, there are always dictionaries and spell-checkers that come to one's aid. But spelling commonly-used proper nouns that you've only heard others pronounce can still pose a challenge when writing them for the first time. Consider the following:<br /><ul><li>We're going on a skiing holiday to Taho.</li><li> I was in Rino last week.</li><li>My friend lives in San Luis Obispoe.</li></ul>Notice that the proper nouns in the above all contain spelling errors, and the respective Google search triggers a "did you mean" spelling suggestion as follows:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-style: italic;">Did you mean:</span> Tahoe</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"> Did you mean: </span>Reno</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"> Did you mean: </span>san luis obispo </li></ul>Over the years, I've come to find this an indispensible tool, especially in cases where there is general agreement on the web as to the correct spelling. And for the record, intelligence on the Web appears to believe that San Luis Obispo can also be spelt San Louis Obispo.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/help/features.html#spell">Google's spell-checking intelligence</a> comes from examining all the documents on the web. Thus, correct spellings often dominate incorrect ones. The example of San Luis Obispo is interesting; if you take the Web as representing current accepted practice, it would appear that people do write that proper noun both ways -- i.e., Luis or Louis.<br /><br />Who knows, perhaps we'll restore the o-u parity by adopting an extra "o" in Luis for the "u" that got dropped in "color."

Spelling For Muggles

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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To watch a guide-dog fly

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see—tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />You might well wonder what interest I might have in image search given that I cannot see. You might be even more surprised to learn that I own a digital camera. :-) I acquired one a few years ago because the cost of taking photos with a digital camera is zero. It only took a couple of weeks before I could take relatively good pictures of my <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/hubbell-labrador/Hubble-shaking-hands-with-Raman.jpg">handsome guide dog</a>. I post many of these pictures to my website -- obviously not for viewing by me, but all my friends.<br /><br />But how do you easily tell friends how to find that special picture? Here Google Image search comes to the rescue. Whenever I'm surrounded by Hubbell's fan club, I want to tell people how they can view specific pictures of her on the web. Universal Resource Locators (URLs) -- those long address strings that make the web work -- are nice, but they have one major disadvantage: they're unspeakable! Thanks to search, I've not had to speak a URL in a long, long time. Instead I usually tell friends to search for [Hubbell Labrador flying] to locate pictures of <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=hubbell+labrador+flying">her sitting on the pilot seat of an aircraft</a> that I posted many years ago to the web.<br /><br />One can think of such focused search queries as "conversational bookmarks" -- the spoken equivalent of bookmarks one saves within a traditional web browser. Notice that such conversational bookmarks are not specific to image search. I often tell people that they can find me on the web by searching Google for [raman labrador] and clicking the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=raman+labrador&num=25&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky">I'm Feeling Lucky</a> button.

To watch a guide-dog fly

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see—tips that sighted people, among…

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Wish I had Google Scholar as a grad student

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see—tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />Conducting research from the comfort of one's office or home is a wonderful convenience, but it's especially rewarding when you need to go the extra mile in accessing research publications. <p>When I was a graduate student at Cornell, I needed to go to the library with a reader (yes, an actual live human, not a computer:-)), find the relevant publications, and then arrange to have what I judged to be the most relevant articles read to me. Occasionally, I would scan the printed articles to OCR them and have my computer read it aloud to me. Mostly this was a failure since the articles I wanted to read were in the fields of math or computer science, and OCR dealt poorly, if at all, with technical material. More often than not, I would write to the authors of the publications in the hope of getting access to online versions so that I could save on reader time. </p> <p>Turning the clock forward to today, equivalent access is a <a href="http://scholar.google.com/">Google Scholar search</a> away. What's more, thanks to publishers like the ACM who making journal publications available online, one can access the complete publication directly from within the search hits. Since the advent of Google Scholar, I have not had to send out email requests to authors asking for access to the electronic versions. And where authors have made these available from their websites, Google Scholar links to those as part of the result set. </p> <p>So I wish I had had this as a graduate student. Though I have to say working at Google does feel like being in graduate school (but with better food and more money)—so maybe my wish has been granted. </p>

Wish I had Google Scholar as a grad student

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see—tips that sighted people, among…

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Web APIs, web mashups and accessibility

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see—tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup">Wikipedia defines mashup</a> in the context of web applications as a "(web application hybrid), a website or web application that combines content from more than one source."<br /><br />More generally, web mashups are created by leveraging web APIs to present data in new and innovative ways—often, such innovation comes about by combining data from a multiplicity of sources. However, notice that combining multiple data sources into new and innovative views is not the only possible use of web APIs; in particular, you can also leverage these APIs to produce alternative views of a given data source. Newer uses of web APIs such as those provided by Google Maps, Google Calendar or Google Search often fall into this category of providing convenient user access. Thus, it is possible to embed a Google Calendar or the map for a given location into one's website.<br /><br />Moving from the above scenario to leveraging web APIs in the context of mashups for enabling better accessibility is but one step away. As an example, envision a very basic Google Maps mashup that embeds a map on a web page—but with zoom level set to twice the normal default. This might make a very interesting starting point for a low-vision user. Given the expressiveness of web APIs, we can go a lot further. I believe web mashups provide a very rich platform for building creative accessibility solutions with the goals of:<br /><ul><li>Providing the ability to build highly optimized custom views for cases where a "one size fits all" solution does not work </li><li>Experimenting with different accessibility approaches to discover solutions that work for inclusion into the mainstream </li></ul>To get a sense of what is possible, see how other web developers are leveraging these APIs to provide innovative access solutions. As an example of what can be done with GData-based APIs provided by applications like Google Calendar and friends, see this trip report—<a title="http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2007/01/mashup-camp-3-googlers-experience.html" href="http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2007/01/mashup-camp-3-googlers-experience.html">Mashup Camp 3 - A Googler's Experience</a>. In particular, notice <a title="http://www.robocal.com/" href="http://www.robocal.com/">RoboCal</a> a mashup that provides spoken access to your calendar.

Web APIs, web mashups and accessibility

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see—tips that sighted people, among…

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Speech-friendly textual directions from Google Maps

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />Google Maps and its associated local search is a quick and easy means of locating businesses and obtaining directions. Most people who use it already seem to enjoy the graphical interface with its extremely reactive GUI. But when using spoken output, this visual richness can get in the way of quickly listening to the results of a maps query.<br /><br />As an alternative, Google Maps also provides a simple to use a textual interface that serves up directions very efficiently when working with a screenreader or a Braille display. This alternative view into Google Maps is here, at the <a href="http://maps.google.com/?output=html">Textual Maps UI</a> (<span style="font-style:italic;">http://maps.google.com/?output=html</span>). It's extremely useful for blind and visually impaired users, as well as an effective solution for those times when you're at a non-graphical display and need to quickly look up a location.<br /><br />Just type a simple English query of the form <b>start address to end address</b> and quickly get the information you're looking for. Though we added this option to enhance the accessibility of Google Maps for blind and low-vision users, perhaps others will find this alternative view a useful addition to their maps arsenal.

Speech-friendly textual directions from Google Maps

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research ScientistFrom time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, am…

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