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New content labelling system helps to identify accessible websites
- 22 Mar 07, 11:59 AM
Technology firm are developing a website labelling system to help users identify accessible websites.
Accessibility badges have been around for almost as long as there have been standards. What makes this different is that the labelling is not just a badge but data contained in the code of the page. That makes it far more usable. There is a beta plug-in for the browser that will show whether websites displayed in search engine results have a valid accessibility label or not.
That Segala’s labelling system has the flexibility to be applied in other areas like editorial standards and to mark adult content may be the key to its success. Some major organisations such as , and have expressed an interest in it. And the scheme has been approved by the , the organisation behind web standards.
Arguably the biggest problem still remains a lack of websites that are accessible, and not a way of finding them. tool, and, dare I say it, , already provide search options although many users prefer the greater choice offered by mainstream search engines and to take their chances with the most relevant result. However, with the weight of W3C behind it, and if major companies do get involved, maybe Segala’s labelling system will help to encourage more organisations to think about accessibility issues.
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Segala's extension is quaint and all, but very much flawed at this stage - of course, it's more of a proof of concept than an actual usable resource.
The output that the extension overlays on top of the Google search results is, ironically, not keyboard accessible (the icons can be tabbed to, but not activated other than with a mouse/pointer).
At this stage, due to the not very widespread use of the trustmarks, it usually happens that one does a Google search for verified or self-labelled sites only to be presented with an empty results page (empty because the extension has removed the non-verified or non-labelled search results from the page after it's been sent by Google), but with the results page counter/links at the bottom still there (as the extension only transforms the results one page at a time).
Lastly, in order to look for the potential presence of trustmark metadata, the extension executes a full page fetch for each result (potentially messing up stats collection on those pages).
It's a good idea, but I'd say it's something that would be far better handled at the server/search-engine end of things. As a proof of concept, though, it's interesting. And the concept of trustmark as RDF/metadata is far more appropriate than the original "Segala approved" trustmark (which was effectively just an image with a link to the certificate on the Segala site) I remember seeing back in 2006 on five sites (two Segala and three O2 sites). Once/if site owners actually start using this new trustmark metadata, the idea could prove useful.
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and of possible related relevance, this piece from June last year, concerning Segala
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Hi there, as an ex pat Bristolian living in oz i was disapointed to not be able to have my say on the city/rovers ground sharing. groundsharing would appear to be big business in oz and also makes a lot of common sense. All my life the bristol clubs have been languishing in the bottom half as it were, (all but for a couple of seasons). So how much sense would it make to halve the cost of ground and upkeep and spend more on the teams. Stop living in the past and hopefully make at least one club successful.
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