Google Guide

A guide for users of the Jaws screen reader, written by David Bailes. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.

Introduction
Entering your search terms
Search Results
Type of content
Search Options
Search terms
Search settings

Introduction

A search engine is a program for searching the web for pages and occasionally files which are relevant to a set of search terms. There are lots of search engines available, but Google is usually considered to be the best general purpose search engine, and its web address is www.google.com.

Google Instant

Google instant is an option which immediately shows and updates the search results as you type in your search terms. This can be useful for sighted users, but doesn't have any advantages for users of screen readers. It's disadvantages include that the option of increasing the number of search results on a page is not available with the Google Instant option, and that the option makes Jaws more sluggish when typing in search terms.

For the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers, Google instant is only available for versions 8 and later, or 3 and later respectively. By default the option is on. When the Google Instant is available and on, the first link on any page of Google's website is a link to turn the option off. Note that the option can also be turned on and off in the Search settings.

It's recommended that if this option is available, then it's turned off, and the rest of this guide assumes that this is the case.

Landmarks

To aid navigation, Google's result pages contain landmarks. These are a relatively new feature for web page navigation, and to use them you'll need to be using Jaws 10 or later, and either Internet Explorer 8, or Firefox 3. Although the landmarks make some of the navigation easier, it's still straightforward to navigate without them. To move to the next or previous landmark press ; or Shift + ; respectively. Landmarks are described in more detail in the Landmark roles section of the separate HTML Page Navigation Guide.

Outline

This is an outline of searching using Google:

Enter one or more search terms. This can be done either on Google's website or in a web browser's search box, as described in the next section. Often the search terms are simply one or more words, but more advanced options are available, as described in the Search terms section.
After you've entered the search terms and pressed Enter, you're taken to the first page of the results. Here you can browse through the results and open a link to any you're interested in.
Optionally, from the results page you can customize and filter the search results. For example, you may be only interested in pages published in the country where you live, or pages which have been published in the last week. This is described in the Type of content and Search options sections.

An example

As a simple example of a search, assuming that you've set your browser's home page to be the Google website, then to search for the freedom scientific website:

Press Alt + Home to move to your home page, which you've set to be the Google web site (www.google.com).
The initial focus is the edit box for your search terms. If necessary press Enter to go into Forms mode, type in the words freedom and scientific, and then press Enter.
You're taken to the first page of the results. To move to the beginning of the list of results, press Ctrl to stop Jaws reading the page, and then either press ; until you get to the main landmark, or press H to move to the level 1 heading, and then press 2 until you get to the level 2 heading Search results. Then press H or I to move through the results until you think you may have found what you want. Open the link.

Help

To access Google's help pages, open the Search Help link on any results page.

Entering your search terms

You can enter your search terms either on Google's home page, or in a web browser's search box, and these are described in the next two sections. Once you've done a search and are on one of the results pages, you can also enter some new search terms there, as described in the search results section.

Using Google's home page

Go to Google's Home page which has the address www.google.com. You can either press Alt + D to move to the address bar, and type in this address followed by Enter, or if you've set Google to be your web browser's home page, you can just press Alt + Home.
The initial focus is the edit box for your search terms. If you're using Jaws 10 or later and have auto-forms mode enabled, then you're automatically taken into Forms mode. For earlier versions of Jaws, press Enter to go into forms mode. Type in your search terms, and then press Enter.
You're taken to the first page of the results of the search, which is described in the Search results section below.

Using the Search box in your web browser

You can also enter your search terms in the Search box in Internet Explorer 7 or 8, or in Firefox 3. Provided that the current search provider for the Search box has been set to Google, then:

Press Ctrl + E to move to the Search edit box.
Type in your search terms and press Enter.
You're taken to the the first page of the search results, which is described in the next section.

Using the Search box in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, and managing its search providers is described in detail in the Search box section of the separate Internet Explorer 7 guide and Internet Explorer 8 guide respectively.

Search results

After you've typed in your search terms and pressed Enter, as described in the previous section, you're taken to the first page of the results of the search. On this page you can browse through the results, and open the link to any results which you're interested in. Optionally, you can also start another search, and customize and filter the search results.

The number of results on a page is 10 by default, but you can set this to any value you want, as described in the Search settings section below. Normally, useful search results occur within the first 20 to 30 results, so setting the number of results per page to 30 saves you having to navigate between the results pages.

The title of a search results page is the search terms dash Google Search, and the page includes the following:

A Search edit box containing the search terms, which can be used for starting another search, as described in the Starting a new search section below.
A navigation landmark.
A group of options for the type of content searched, which by default is set to Everything. For more details, see the Type of content section.
The level 2 heading Search options, followed by a number of groups of options which are described in the Search options section.
There may be an adverts section, depending on your search terms. If present, this consists of a level 2 heading Ads, followed by a list, in which each item contains a level 3 heading which is also a link, a short description, and a web address.
A main landmark, indicating the main content of the page.
If Google thinks that you have misspelled any of the search terms, then there is the text “Did you mean:” followed by Google's suggested search terms which are a link.
The level 2 heading Search results, followed by a list of search results. Each result contains a level 3 heading which is also a link, and some information about it. The format of these results is described in more detail in the Search result format section below.
Possibly another adverts section, again depending on your search terms.
A content info landmark.
The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 etc which correspond to the page numbers of the search results pages, and each of these is a link to that results page, except for the current page. In addition the links Previous and Next appear before and after the the numbers respectively.

Navigating the search results

After pressing Ctrl to stop Jaws reading the entire page, quick ways of moving to the search results include:

Press ; until you get to the main landmark.
Press H to move to the level 1 heading Google, and then press 2 until you get to the level 2 heading Search results.

To move through the search results, you can either press H to move through the level 3 headings or press I to move through the list items. If you use the navigation quick key I then Jaws also reads the number of the item in the list, which can be useful.

If you need to move to the next or previous search result page, then you can use the links list dialog (Insert + F7) to quickly find the Next or Previous link. Alternatively, to move to the groups of links for moving between pages press ; until you get to the content info landmark.

If Google has suggestions for corrections for any misspelled search terms these appear after the main landmark and before the level 2 heading Search results. So if you're unsure of your spelling and you want to check if there are any suggestions, then if you've navigated to the search results using landmarks, then just read down a line or two, and if you've navigated using headings, then just read up a line or two.

Search result format

The format of search results vary, but they all include a level 3 heading which is also a link, and there are typical formats both for web pages and files.

The typical format for a result for a web page is:

A level 3 heading which is also a link to the web page, where the link text is the page title.
Result details button. This opens a preview image of the web page, and so is of no interest to users of screen readers.
The web address of the page.
A short extract from the web page which includes the search terms.

And the typical format of a result for a file is:

The file extension of the file, for example [PDF].
A level 3 heading which is also a link to the file, where the link text is the file's title.
The web address of the file.
The file format, for example Microsoft Word.
A Quick View link, which takes you to a page where the page is displayed using Google Docs.
A short extract from the file which includes the search terms.

Starting a new search

You can use either of the two edit boxes on results pages to start a new search:

Press E to move to one of the edit boxes.
Press Enter to go into forms mode. The edit box contains your previous search terms, and the text is unselected. So if you want to overwrite this text, press Ctrl + A to select the text before typing in your new search terms, and then press Enter.
You're taken to the first page of the search results.

Type of content

Google provides a number of groups of options for filtering and customizing the search. The first group of options is for the type of content searched for, and this is followed by a number of other groups of options, which are described in the next section of the guide.

The default type of content is Everything, and other options include News, Blogs, and Discussions. Ways of moving to the type of content options include:

Press ; until you get to the navigation landmark.
Press 2 until you get to the Search Options level 2 heading, and then read back from there.

Initially, the group of options has the following structure:

A short list of possible types of content, in which all of the items apart from the selected option are links. The options in this list are the ones which Google considers are most relevant to your search terms. Everything is always the first item, and by default it's the selected option.
More/Fewer link. By default this is a More link, but unfortunately Jaws reads this as a MoreFewer link when to a sighted user is appears as either a More or a Fewer link. If you open the More link then an additional list of content options appears between the first list and the link.

Note that the settings of these options and the options described in the next section remain unchanged if you start another search using one of the edit boxes on a results page, but are reset to their default values if you use Google's home page, or your browser's search box.

Search options

After the groups of options for the type of content searched, which were described in the last section there's a level 2 heading “Search Options”, and then a number of other groups of options, and these vary with type of content searched. For searches of type Everything, which is the default, then the groups of options include the following:

Where in the world the page is hosted: the default the entire web, and there's an option for pages only from your country.
The time when the page was published: the default is Any Time, and the other options include Past day, Past week, and Past year.
A group whose default is standard results, and which includes the options fewer shopping sites, and more shopping sites.

The groups of options have the following structure:

A list of the groups of options. Each item contains a nested list of the options in the group, and in this list each item apart from the selected option is a link.
A more search tools link, which is only present when the type of content is Everything.

When you first move to a results page, and the type of content is set to Everything, then the list of the groups of options only contains some of the options available, and if you want to see all the options, you have to open the more search tools link, which follows the list. However the the options for choosing where the page is hosted is always present. So if, for example, you only want to see the pages in the UK, then to find and open the “Pages from the UK” link, you could:

Use the links list dialog (Insert + F7).
Press ; until you get to the navigation landmark; press H to move to the Search options heading; press Tab to move to the Pages from the UK link; and then open it.

To access the other options, it's normally useful to first open the more search tools link so that all the options are shown. Ways of finding and opening this link include:

Press ; until you get to the content info landmark, then press Shift + Tab to move to the previous link.
Press ; until you get to the navigation landmark, press H to move to the Search options heading, press L to move to the list, and finally press Shift + period to move to the end of the list.

Search terms

The default treatment of search terms is as follows:

Search terms are not case sensitive.
The web pages found by the search must include all the search terms.
Automatic exclusion of common words. Words such as “where”, ”how”, certain single digits and single letters are excluded because they slow down the search without producing better results. If you need to include a common word, then you can use an exact phrase search, which is described below.
Includes word variations. For example, if a search term is diet, then the word dietary will also be used as a search term.

Google provides several options for making searches more precise, and some of the most useful are described in the following sections.

Exact phrase search

To find pages which include an exact phrase, put quotation marks around the phrase. Note that your search terms can include other terms in addition to the exact phrase. Examples:

“emily dickinson”
“emily dickinson” biography
“we all live in a yellow submarine”

Site search

To search a particular website, or websites whose addresses have a particular ending, you can use the site: operator. For example “site:www.bbc.co.uk history” searches the BBC website for history, and “site:edu history” searches all websites whose address ends in edu for history.

Negative terms

These can be useful if your search terms have more than one meaning. If you put a minus sign immediately before a term, then that term is avoided (You must leave a space before the minus sign). For example, “virus -computer” searches for virus but not computer.

Synonym search

To search for synonyms of a search term, rather than just the term, put a tilde (~) sign immediately in front of the term, and leave a space in front of the tilde sign.

Search settings

How you can set various search settings depends on which browser you've using. There are two main groups: the first is the older browsers Internet Explorer 6 or 7; and the second is the more modern browsers – Internet Explorer 8 and later, and the currently supported versions of Firefox and Chrome. The search settings for these groups are described in the next two sections.

Firefox or Internet Explorer 8 or later

If you're using Firefox or Internet Explorer 8 or later, then you can customize the search using the Search settings page. The following description assumes that you're using Jaws 11 or later. If you're using Jaws 9 or 10, see the next section for additional information.

To get to the Search settings page:

On a results page, move to the options button, which is the second button on the page. To do this you could press Ctrl + Home, and then press the letter B twice.
Press the button. A menu opens.
Press Down Arrow to move to the Search options link, and open it. You're taken to the Search Setting page.

The Search settings page includes the following items:

Three tabs: Search results, Languages, and Location. By default, the Search results tab is selected. To select another tab, press Enter on that tab.
A number of settings for the selected tab. The section for each setting starts with a level 2 heading.
Save and Cancel buttons. If you make any changes on the page, remember to press the Save button. If you press the Save button and a dialog doesn't open to say that your changes have been saved, then press Insert + Z to switch the virtual PC cursor off, Tab to the Save button, and press it.

With the search results tab selected, which it is by default, the page includes the following settings:

SafeSearch Filters, which is set using a slider. Note that you have to be in Forms mode to set the slider. The default setting is moderate.
Google Instant predictions, which is set using a group of three radio buttons. You've probably already turned off instant predictions using the link at the top of one of the pages on the Google web site. If this is the case then the Never show Instant results radio button is checked. Note that these radio buttons do not behave in the normal manner. If you need to set one of the radio buttons, move to it, press Enter to go into Forms mode, press Spacebar to check it, and then press Esc or Numpad plus to come out of forms mode.
Results per page. There's a slider which allows you to set the number of results page. If you move to the slider using Down Arrow, then the correct setting of the slider is read. To interact with the slider, you have to be in forms mode. Note that if you're using Internet Explorer 8 or 9, then when interacting with the slider, Jaws reads the current value of the slider incorrectly. Jaws reads ten less than the correct value. For example, if the value is 30, Jaws reads 20.
Where results open, which is set using an “Open each selected search result in a new window” check box, and which is not checked by default. Unfortunately, Jaws can not change the setting when using the virtual PC cursor. To change the setting, press Insert + Z to switch the virtual PC cursor off, Tab until you get to the check box, use Spacebar to change the setting, and then press Insert + Z to switch back to using the virtual PC cursor.

With the languages tab selected, the page includes the following settings:

For Google text. This is set using a list box, and you need to be in Forms mode to change this control.
For search results. For other languages which you want to see in your search results, there are a large number of check boxes. Jaws can not change the settings when using the virtual PC cursor. To change any of the settings, press Insert + Z to switch the virtual PC cursor off. You can then Tab to the check boxes you want to change, and use Spacebar to change their settings. Finally, press Insert + Z to switch back to using the virtual PC cursor.

Jaws 9 or 10

If you're using Jaws 9 or 10, then to get to the Search settings page:

On a results page, move to the options button, which is the second button on the page. To do this you could press Ctrl + Home, and then press the letter B twice.
Press the button. A menu opens.
Press Down Arrow to move to the Search options link, and open it. You're taken to the Search Setting page.

On the Search settings page, Jaws 9 and 10 are too old to understand the code on the page which has been included to make the controls accessible in the normal manner. However, you can interact with the controls if you switch the PC virtual cursor off by pressing Insert + Z. You can then Tab between the controls.