The Dayton Daily News has a front page story about the benefits of having a site that is accessible to the blind. While they mention Google- and their new push in favor of accessibility standards- the real reason is that the Google bot that indexs your site works just like a blind person- and can only navigate where it can follow the meta data and navigation.

The good news for Websitetology graduates- everything we teach you to do- builds accessible sites- that are optimized for the blind- and for Google.

Here is a link to the story- it’s so short- I’ve quoted the whole thing.
Blind users getting help to get on Internet

By Jim DeBrosse
Staff Writer

DAYTON | For most Web users, pop-up ads and layered graphics can be annoying. But for blind users, they are major roadblocks on the Internet highway.
But pressure from lawsuits and advocates for the visually impaired has resulted in Web pages that are easier for the blind to navigate using screen-reading equipment.Last month Google introduced a special search engine that ranks sites according to how accessible they are to the blind (labs.google.com/accessible/). Yahoo! also redid its home page within the past month with larger, simpler display options, and AOL will soon follow suit.

“More and more companies are going to have to address these issues, not only for the disabled population, but for the aging (baby boomers) who are going to be exerting pressure of their own to access all these technologies,” said Jesse Walker, a human factors research psychologist at the University of Dayton Research Institute.

Walker has been working with several corporations on building more accessible Web pages.

That’s something Nate Fernandes, 21, a senior at the University of Dayton, can appreciate. He uses a popular software program for the blind called JAWS (Java Access With Speech) that enables his computer to read the content on computer screens out loud.

But some items, like PDF files, are often difficult for his equipment to read.

If you want to read more about why and how the Google accessible search works- here is their FAQ:http://labs.google.com/accessible/faq.html

I tried to find information on Jesse Walker, and UDRI in general, but, unfortunately, their site isn’t updated with his info.

If you want a site that works for the blind and for you- come to a Websitetology seminar.

While most of the people who take our seminar know what Google is, they have no clue on how it works. Matt Cutts works at Google, and is used to speaking to people who eat sleep and breathe Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so- some of this will be over a lot of peoples heads- but- he’s posted a series of videos of himself- answering questions:
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » Google/SEO

I’ve linked to his category- so as he adds more video, they should all be there. As of this writing, he has 10 videos, each about 5 minutes each. The bad thing about answering these as video, is that Google can’t index everything he says- a transcript- which would help him actually achieve Search Engine Optimization. Remember, google can’t tell what a picture, a video, or a podcast contains unless you explain it- either in Alt text or descriptions. Tagging each video with keywords helps, but nothing beats a complete transcript or a very good text description. By writing about his videos and linking back to them, I’m helping make his site rank higher on the subject of Search Engine Optimization- how ’bout that!
Some things I picked up from watching all 50 minutes (so you won’t have to):

Google likes content- optimized for both SEO and the user experience. It doesn’t help to have all the keywords if people don’t want to stick around on your site.

Google doesn’t give blogs a higher rank- however, if your site is totally “crawlable” and has clean code- that sure helps. W3C validation is good- but not totally critical to Google. He says the reason is simple: something like 40% of code out there has syntax errors. If you don’t know what a syntax error is- that’s an even better reason to use something like WordPress which writes most of your code for you.

Speaking of WordPress- I would almost bet my TiVo that Matt is using WordPress for his blog/site- I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

One thing he was pretty clear about- Google people don’t like to be fooled. SEO games to build rank are frowned upon. Always make your site look the same to the googlebot as a regular visitor would see it. Hiding white text on a white background would be bad. The issues of localization and cloaking are described pretty well- and if you need to know more- watch the videos.

If you don’t want to be a Search Engine Optimization slave- the simple answer is have good content- original content. Don’t copy and paste- quote and discuss. The more content you have on your topic- the better.

And as a note- Matt, if you do see this, I’d be honored to have a comment on this site!

Until you start getting a lot of traffic- you won’t be ready to sell ads on your site, but- maybe you might consider placing some ads to bring that traffic. However, if you are “the expert” on any one thing- you may just have the “Right” readers that someone wants to reach. Selling ads, not just Google Ad Sense placements, can be profitable- if you have an audience someone really wants to reach.

Consider this:

If you think blogs are not a viable ad medium, consider this: Many blogs are achieving “big media” reach. The celebrity gossip blog Perez Hilton, for example, or DailyKos have 500,000 readers a day, which is a quite a “big media” reach.

Read the full article The Value of Blog Advertising | MarketingProfs.com for more information. It also has tips on what to put in your blogad.
We’ll look more into advertising on blogs in the near future here- if you have questions about how to do this and can’t wait, give us a call.