position: absolute - Design resources and inspiration.

Some good news for everyone relying on accessible websites: Google is experimenting with a new search engine: Google Accessible Search. The official Google Blog states:

Accessible Search adds a small twist to the familiar Google search: In addition to finding the most relevant results as measured by Google’s search algorithms, it further sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts. (Simplicity, of course, is subjective in this context.) When users search from the [..] site, they’ll receive results that are prioritized based on their usability.

To see the difference to regular search results, Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped has created a comparison tool.

I hope this will pick up. With Google now (quasi)officially supporting accessibility standards, it might help further push the issue into the public eye and increase awareness. It’s just too bad that the Google search page, as well as most other Google pages, does not produce valid code itself.

Every once in a while, Google plays around with the logo on their website to commemorate special occasions. CNN has a feature on Dennis Hwang, the man who’s been behind most of the Google logos that have been decorating the site over the past years. Interesting introduction:

Dennis Hwang may be the most famous unknown artist in the world — his work doesn’t hang in galleries or museums, but it’s been viewed hundreds of millions of times.

The Google logo gallery itself links to another interview with Hwang.

It seems like problems concerning the W3C are arising, new standards are going nowhere and our great fathers of the W3C are sleeping. At least, this is the impression Björn Höhrmann gives us in his public statement concerning his departure from the W3C. Well-known and respected standards evangelist Jeffrey Zeldman seems to agree and adds his comments:

Beholden to its corporate paymasters who alone can afford membership, the W3C seems increasingly detached from ordinary designers and developers.

To those of us who are concerned about standards to help guide the web in everyone’s best interest, I consider this is a worrying issue. I’m waiting to see how and if the W3C responds to these allegations.

Update: it appears there is a response on the W3C’s QA Weblog.

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