Using Kagi Search with Low Vision

https://veroniiiica.com/using-kagi-search-with-low-vision/

by speckx • 2 months ago

269 90 2 months ago

damnesian• 2 months ago

I know it's a completely different thing- but the neurodiverse face similar struggles of having to wade through reams of completely superfluous content to get to anything usuable.

Having done plenty of text to speech testing of my own website, I've never thought to turn it onto a Google search results page. It's abysmal.

Of course Google is an accessibility nightmare.

jacobmarble• 2 months ago

One more reason to love Kagi Search.

tonypapousek• 2 months ago

The custom css is tight, love using inky blacks on my oled devices with just a single style sheet.

equasar• 2 months ago

the thing I really miss when I use magic, is recommended places from Google maps, where to watch certain movie/series, a lot of things like that, where you can infer recommendations based on your location. Kagi might be good to filter everything scored "bad", but makes you work more.

freediver2• 2 months ago

We have a big overhaul of Kagi Maps coming, stay tuned :)

user3939382• 2 months ago

Kagi is awesome! Good luck w the updates

ExMachina73• 2 months ago

Looking forward to this.

ziml77• 2 months ago

How do you feel your data for Kagi Maps compares to Google Maps? It's the kind of thing that's harder to test than switching web searches over to Kagi. I need to already know that the business and transit data is reliable which is why I still go to Google Maps.

Semaphor2• 2 months ago

I’m looking forward to it. I never stopped using Google Maps because no alternative was as ubiquitously useful (OSM is better in certain areas, but it’s hard to say when, which eventually resulted in me switching back to GM full time).

Marsymars• 2 months ago

I don't have low vision (yet), but do a fair amount of my reading sitting ~3m from a 65" screen, and I gotta say, the UI of this blog is lovely for that.

payphonefiend• 2 months ago

Observation on the author's site: it's cool you can tell their site is designed for them by them, or other people with low vision. big font, high contrast, etc...

slopinthebag• 2 months ago

It's also nice for everyone. Like, very readable, pleasant, way better than the trendy modern designs.

willio58• 2 months ago

I love accessibility, I just want to preface what I’m about to say with that.

I found this site hard to read. I’m reading on my phone btw.

The text is too big for me and the line height (space between lines really) isn’t right, it’s too spaced out. Can I read it? Absolutely, I just can’t read it as fast as I normally would. It’s like when my mom hands me her phone and the text is so large I can barely operate it for a while, then I eventually get used to it to a certain extent.

What’s funny is this itself is an accessibility issue in the opposite direction of most accessibility issues. Just goes to show users should really be able to have their own text preferences reflected on the web.

tamimio6• 2 months ago

Kagi is one of the few services that I will never use, it’s a privacy nightmare. Imagine all your search history are tied to one account, an account that id you with your payment information, and is hosted in the US? Google is better at this point, at least you can use it without an account.

Skunkleton• 2 months ago

You must be joking. Google ties all of your searches to you wether you log in or not.

tamimio6• 2 months ago

I’m certainly not joking. Google when it started it wasn’t as evil as now, but the bigger it gets the more evil it becomes, who knows what kagi will turn into if they got as big as google. But again on principle, can you use google search in the library without an account? Yes. Can you use kagi in the library without an account? No. So whenever and whatever you do, your queries are logged and tracked back to you, only waiting for xyz to be pulled out.

MostlyStable2• 2 months ago

Here ya go:

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html

tamimio6• 2 months ago

Is it open source? Audited? It is like back to how vpn services try to establish some sort of a trust relationship, which imo is more dangerous to have a false sense of trust than none, I prefer no trust at all, zero trust, especially when the service is SaaS in the US.

somat• 2 months ago

So make a new account every once in a while if you are that paranoid. The whole value proposition of kagi is that it moves you from being the product(eyeballs for ads) to the customer of a product(search results) This flips the incentive of the search provider from abusing you to serving you. Hard to say if it actually will work. But I applaud kagi for trying.

And it is not like you marry kagi and once you sign up you can never use another search engine again.

al_borland• 2 months ago

They don’t store search history linked to accounts. Logs are only retained for 7-90 days[0].

You can pay anonymously[1]. You can also authenticate anonymously, as someone else already mentioned.

Meanwhile Google retains everything forever and does everything in their power to track everything you do across the web and tie it back to you, logged in or not. This is their entire business model.

[0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-trust

[1] https://blog.kagi.com/accepting-paypal-bitcoin

ajyoon• 2 months ago

Kagi is the one and only product I will ever stan

mixmastamyk• 2 months ago

Ampersander• 2 months ago

Biggest fan like in the Eminem song Stan

dredmorbius• 2 months ago

<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stan>

saint112• 2 months ago

I've been using Kagi for a while now and I'm never going back to Google. Everything is just so much better when you are not the product.

m-schuetz• 2 months ago

The feature that sold me was the domain block feature. Search results are so much better when they dont include SEO'd garbage, sites with entirely AI generated content, or userbenchmark.com

pasc18782• 2 months ago

Google a long time ago did that, but I assume those sites are where they get money from and so they removed that choice.

skrtskrt• 2 months ago

I also love the ability to prioritize domains.

I push docs.rs up because otherwise I often get the crates.io page which I never want.

And I push GitHub/GitLab/Codeberg sites up so I get actual repos instead of product pages.

duskdozer2• 2 months ago

I use https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist for that. ~10k blocked domains and rules. There is just so so much spam

hankbond• 2 months ago

I love when people make personal websites (seemingly) purely for themselves. The design of this website really reflects the perspective of the author in a way that was immediately apparent. I've never seen a website with a menu that large.

lynndotpy• 2 months ago

This author is excellent. I found their blog earlier today when relaying advice on setting up an iPhone for someone to use after a stroke. ( https://veroniiiica.com/iphone-accessibility-settings-for-st... )

delis-thumbs-7e2• 2 months ago

My eyesight is not even that bad, but I fpund the large contrast and for really easy and enjoyable to read.

MavisBacon• 2 months ago

It is nice but the website has some obvious contrast issues such as in the header. "Veronica With Four Eyes" is black text on a dark grey background

duskdozer2• 2 months ago

I think that's something on your end. Looking at the CSS (and checking in dev browser) it should be #0a0a0a on #fff (light) or #fff on #111 (dark)

poetril• 2 months ago

Kagi has been one of my all time favorite products. It has enriched my search experience drastically. One of my favorite features I don't see talked about enough is the keybindings. Using vim keys for navigating search results is such a fantastic user experience, and much like normal vim I'm not sure I could go back to navigating search any other way. I also really appreciate their AI quick-search feature is explicitly opt in and trigger by adding a "?" to the end of search. Their selection of widgets is also quite nice and I find my self reaching for them quite a bit.

Nathanba3• 2 months ago

I just don't understand how they can think that not giving me a single free search per month is a good idea. I used Kagi when they still had a free plan and it was fine but I still preferred Google. Now I can't even try it again to see if it has additional value.

SJMG• 2 months ago

Do you think the potential upside is worth the $5 it would take to explore?

flexagoon• 2 months ago

They offer a free trial with 100 searches

bradleyankrom• 2 months ago

Not promising it would work, but I would email support and ask to have the trial reset for your account. Companies are usually cool to restart trials if you ask.

grub5000• 2 months ago

Kagi now gives you 50 free searches, at least if you're not signed in.

abtinf• 2 months ago

This approach ignores 99% of the value of Kagi. Google provides atrocious results compared to Kagi once you've taken a few minutes to use the basic Kagi features.

dewey• 2 months ago

As a business you don't want to serve everyone. That's why many companies after a while raise their prices, even if that prices out the enthusiast market they served at the beginning so they can go further up market.

Often times it does not make sense to serve free users who are often causing more hassle than it's worth. Having a free trial and then either converting users or not makes sense, but serving a user who uses it for a few queries every month ("I check every few months and only do a few searches at most") potentially does not exactly make sense business wise or even warrant the time building that free tier for an audience that's not willing to pay anyway.

hod66542• 2 months ago

I love Kagi, but it is soooo slow compared to Google. Really annoying...

herrherrmann• 2 months ago

You mean the search results are loading slow? I’ve sometimes noticed that, but not really to a degree that it was significantly worse than Google.

hod66542• 2 months ago

The whole page loads slow as compared to google. To the point it's annoying. I'm in Europe though.

jesterswilde• 2 months ago

I really appreciate clearly custom websites. My eyes are also quite bad (legally blind.)

Nearly ironically, because the site is already created for low vision, it had issues with the things that I do. Dark Reader froze up (uncommon) and the font was, for the first time, too large.

I am glad to see someone else enjoying Kagi.

squigz• 2 months ago

I was wondering why my browser was not happy with her site. Indeed, Dark Reader was struggling with it. I've never seen that before.

Legally blind here too o7

dmfdmf• 2 months ago

So far, so good. I just let Kagi renew after my first year. The nicest thing is getting relevant search links on the first page or two and not pages of SEO links or ads masked as links that are irrelevant to my search. I haven't even used the advanced features yet but just using it in base mode is a huge time (and frustration) saver for me.

bandrami• 2 months ago

Kagi was the best service provider change I've made in years and if anybody cares for an anonymous HN endorsement, they have mine.

InsideOutSanta• 2 months ago

Agree. I admit, I was initially hesitant to pay for a search provider given all the free options, but I'm glad I made the jump. Using Kagi feels like using Google in the early 00s.

Semaphor2• 2 months ago

if anybody cares for an anonymous HN endorsement

tbf, those are common in every Kagi or Search Engine in general article on HN ;)

- A happy user since the beta days before you even had to pay.

delis-thumbs-7e2• 2 months ago

I have been paying for Kagi since last year and love it. I am not going back to using Google crap.

jeremyjh• 2 months ago

I've been using Kagi for a couple of years now. For awhile, my work Chrome profile was still set to use Google for search by default because I don't login to personal accounts on it. I didn't use search that often for programming work - I used ChatGPT or Claude much more often - so it was always incredibly shocking to me how terrible Google search was every time I used it.

The AI results were bad beyond all human understanding - the sort of product that I thought only a walking corpse like Microsoft could release so broadly. But, that is essentially what Google Search is now. Clearly no one in a position of responsibility knows or cares about product design or performance and it only continues to exist through sheer inertia.

Switching to Kagi is how it felt when I first used broadband internet in college , or when I switched from Alta Vista to Google: the internet works like it should.

TurdF3rguson2• 2 months ago

I just tried it and the search results are terrible. Maybe because Google knows things about me, I guess I can give them the benefit of that doubt.

Clearly inferior to Google though.

mitchell209• 2 months ago

Do you have some example searches that you made? I’m not a heavy search user and not a programmer but I’ve still found the experience on par or better for all of my general searching.

TurdF3rguson2• 2 months ago

I tried with the search I had open which was "cf d1" and I was looking for info on cloudflare d1, Google surfaced it #1 and Kagi it was way at the bottom

rldjbpin• 2 months ago

In the Site Search section, click Add and fill in the following:
Name: Kagi
Shortcut: k
URL: `https://kagi.com/search?q=%s`

looks like one can do this and use search without needing to be logged in. pleasantly surprised to see this. i wonder how they would rate limit users this way.

pasc18782• 2 months ago

Hmm. This page eats memory on both Safari and Vivaldi and Orion even with Javascript off.

superkuh2• 2 months ago

I paid $10/month to Kagi for 3 months. During that time I quickly learned that Kagi's image results were just repackaged google image search; literally the same images returned in the same order as google image search.

I also noticed that Kagi does not ever return more than 250 results. Just 250. Kagi is not the kind of search engine that is useful for someone who is used to web surfing in the kind of style that emerged in the 90s/00s. It is more of a curated corporate search engine that tells you what it thinks you want to see. You are never allowed the resources/results to actually look for yourself.

In the end it was the later that put me off using it. Even though other search engines have been gimped as well (Google only returns a maximum of 400 search results these days, Bing 900, etc) 250 was just far too small to be useful.

theshrike79• 2 months ago

...you regularly browse to the 25th page of Google results? Why?

superkuh2• 2 months ago

No, I regularly browser the 4th page of google results. Why do you only have 10 results per page? That seems really counterproductive. I wish I could do more than the 100 I set it at.

dpatac• 2 months ago

I have been using Kagi for years. I use the family plan for my wife and I. I love it and will continue to use it until it either gets bad, they sell it, or get an ipo. There is no noise. Google, to me is just filled with noise. I used to love the innovation and used many of their products. Their search is now filled with ads and you no longer get good results, in my opinion. Their AI will also have ads: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-marketing-l... Kagi is refreshing, the results have gotten very good. Occasionally there have been poor results with items at the top that should not have been, but I have noticed that it has been corrected quite quickly. Kagi does not retain any of your search terms nor does Kagi Assisstant. To me, Kagi gives me results like google used to, there are No ads, and they do not retain your search terms. I will gladly pay for that.

NoSalt• 2 months ago

Is anybody else old enough to remember when Kagi.com was a place to pay for shareware?

https://web.archive.org/web/19970105191743/https://kagi.com/

Using Kagi Search with Low Vision

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