Google Health for the Visually Impaired
Yesterday Google announced a more accessible Google Health that would provide better integration with self-voicing browsers and screen reading technology.
TV Raman, whose name has already graced the pages of this blog, has written in a blog post that Google is now offering a number of usability improvements to its newly enhanced Google Health application.
The site makes use of widget enhancements implemented through the use of ARIA, which is a set of Web application standards allowing AJAX to operate synchronously with assistive devices. Users can now navigate Google Health to access and manage their health records and search through a robust database of related information.
The site is compatible with Firefox 3.0 using Fire Vox, an extension to the browser framework and uses standard key commands to navigate the content. I was intrigued by the support for access keys, comforted by Raman’s insistence that consistency remained a priority in the user experience:
This paradigm of navigating with the arrow keys, and pressing enter to edit the current item and using power keys for picking the desired action is applied consistently across all aspects of Google Health. Many categories in this application have a large number of items, e.g., the list of medications. In addition to the up and down arrow keys, these lists can be navigated by pressing capital letters to directly jump to the relevant section in the list of items. In addition, the application provides wizards for performing complex tasks, e.g., finding a doctor.
For more specific information, you can read the tech notes accompanying the announcement.
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