Petition to Google to Develop Accessible Sites

Image by Matrixizationized via Flickr

By Tom in Even Grounds blog

Just recently, Mike Gifford (@mgifford) started a petition to google for developing more accessible sites. Gifford is asking google to create standards compliant, accessible sites, to set an example as google code and design is often copied by developers. But let's see what happened behind the scenes.

There has been a very healthy competition between Google and Yahoo! over the last five years in terms of accessibility. As AOL started publicly leading the way in accessibility, shortly after that Google and Yahoo! compiled their accessibility teams, and made several public appearances to promote it. About five years ago, Google was quite accessible in many ways given that at that point accessibility wasn't in the center of attention, while Yahoo! still had a long way to go.

As Google is setting the standards of Internet search, they are also rolling out a bunch of products, adding to their gain of their market share. Most people are using Google for their internet search, e-mail, and other activities. As a socially responsible company, Google made a commitment to make its products accessible to people with disabilities.

However, many of the updated Google products became less accessible than they were before. In addition, Google accessibility received public attention in September, 2009, when Steve Faulkner (@stevefaulkner) wrote a post about the accessibility of the Google Chrome Frame on the Paciello Group's blog. Steve Faulkner concluded that users of assistive technologies are locked out of Google Chromes technologies, until Google makes the Chrome Frame accessible.
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