Using Kagi Search With Low Vision | Veronica With Four Eyes

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Veronica With Four Eyes

My Experience Using Kagi Search With Low Vision

When I was using a search engine to find resources for a class, I noticed that I was taking a lot more vision breaks and struggling with visual fatigue more often than before. A major reason for this was the visually cluttered search results page, which was filled with AI summaries, low-quality content, ads, auto-play content that ignored my device settings, and a condensed visual layout that made it more challenging to read individual results. I was using so much of my energy to look at useless content that it made it challenging to focus on the things that I actually needed. Strategies like text-to-speech help with reading, but I was still encountering issues with browsing search results.

I noticed a huge improvement when I switched to using Kagi, a paid search engine that offers ad-free search and a wide variety of customizations and accessibility features as part of their user-focused search experience. I hadn’t realized how much the visual clutter from search engine pages was weighing on me until it was eliminated, and I have been mentioning Kagi to almost everyone I know since then. Here is an overview of my experience using Kagi Search with low vision, including tips for using Kagi search tools and information about Kagi accessibility for low vision.

Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored by Kagi and I have no affiliation with the company; Kagi does not have referral links or affiliate links. I personally pay for my own Kagi subscription and discovered while writing this post that someone else had included Veroniiiica in Kagi’s Small Web list of curated links, which was a lovely surprise!

Overview of Kagi and pricing

Kagi is a paid, ad-free search engine funded entirely by user subscriptions rather than advertisers, which means results are ranked on quality instead of spamming SEO keywords or paid link placements. Because there are no ads and no tracking-based monetization, the results page is dramatically less cluttered compared to free search engines, making it easier to find relevant information and providing users with control over their browsing experience. Kagi is often shared as a Google search alternative or Bing search alternative.

Kagi offers a free trial and several paid plan tiers, including:

Trial (free): 100 total searches and standard AI access.

Starter ($5/month): 300 searches per month and Kagi Assistant with Quick mode.

Professional ($10/month): Unlimited searches and a larger monthly Kagi Assistant allowance with Quick mode.

Ultimate ($25/month): Everything in Professional, plus Kagi Assistant with Research mode and access to flagship AI models.

Family and Team plans are also available for households and organizations respectively.

In addition to offering discounted annual plans, Kagi has a “Fair Pricing” policy. If a user doesn’t use Kagi searches or AI tools during a given month, the cost of the plan will be credited back to their account so that they are not charged for a service that was not used. Users can also downgrade plans (such as going from Professional to Starter) and have their account credited with the pricing difference.

Related links

Kagi Search

Kagi Search Pricing and Plans – Kagi Search

Kagi Search tools and customizing search results

The Kagi search bar functions in a similar way to other search engines, but the results page itself is much easier to navigate. There are no display ads, no auto playing media, no sponsored results, and no misleading AI summaries pushed to the top;  just ranked links with clean spacing. Kagi does have an optional Quick Answer feature for generating summaries of results, but this is hidden by default. Users can customize Kagi Search results to match their own preferences and access needs.

Some of my favorite tools for customizing search results include:

Lenses are saved filters that narrow results to certain types of sources. Built-in lenses include Forums (results from online communities and Reddit), Academic (results from academic institutions), Programming (coding sites and forums), and more. Custom lenses can also be created with specific included websites, regions, and other parameters; I created lenses for various topics related to low vision and assistive technology. Lenses can be created in Settings > Search > Lenses.

Block, lower, raise, and pin domains. Each result has a shield icon that opens controls to block a site entirely, lower its ranking, raise it, or pin it to the top of future searches. These personalization choices exist inside the Kagi account, are not shared across the web, and can be configured in Settings > Search > Personalized Results.

Kagi offers several options for searching websites with Bangs; typing !w redirects the search to Wikipedia. Custom bangs can also be created as shortcuts to favorite sites, and I use bangs to quickly...