Google research scientist T.V. Raman lost his sight due to glaucoma in childhood. But he never never let himself and other visually impaired people be sidelined on the Internet.

His latest effort is called ‘Accessible Search’, a new Google search engine that aims to deliver results both relevant and easy for visually impaired people to access.

Most visually impaired people surf the Internet using screen readers to convert text and graphics into audio. This used to be relatively easy, but now sites have added all kinds of fancy bells and whistles such as streaming graphics and video that trip up these screen readers. Google's new search engine hopes to weed out hard-to-read pages.

Earlier Google search engine used ‘captchas’ that acted as a security measure to keep out spammers. They worked great, but only if one can see them. Google has now added audio aids to their word verification system. It has also tackled other problems such as making map directions more accessible to visually impaired people.

"This is a very early experiment," Raman said. "We are just beginning to ask the right questions and we are beginning to scratch the surface with respect to getting the right answers."

In other words, Raman wants to capture the Internet equivalent of the Holy Grail: ‘universal accessibility’.