Google has changed the way we use the Internet and set a standard for what people expect from their experience using the web. As the company has grown it has introduced a great many initiatives technologists, communications experts & users are always watching to see what this company will do next.

Unfortunately, Google has not taken a strong lead in producing standards compliant, accessible web sites. Although contributing to the W3C and other standards bodies, the many sites that Google produces do limit access to people with disabilities. Given the web presence that Google has, this is enough of a problem, however it is worsened by the fact that Google’s model is copied regularly by web developers looking for an industry standard to follow.

• Google labs do have a special section – Accessible Web Search for the Visually Impaired however this is not the default and most users would never know it was there.
• There is a discussion group set up to discuss this issue, but there isn’t much if any involvement from Google staff.
• There are a list of other initiatives compiled by Google

Accessibility & standards can’t be an after thought or a perpetual beta side project for the worlds most influential web company. Google as a company needs to publicly state the level of compliance that they will deliver for their core web applications.

UPDATE (Oct 17): Google’s timely response to this petition is appreciated, however – their recent blog post doesn’t add much to what I’d already acknowledged. Having Google note it is interested in serving the 650 million people living with disabilities by expanding it’s understanding of accessibility from it’s mission statement is good. As a leader, Google should:

• support a standards based web development and have the majority of pages validate
• state a minimum accessibility goal for public pages and make a commitment to incremental improvements over time