[LINK] Betsie - accessibility parser

[Jack Gilding]

Linkers

I have just been checking out the UK National Grid for Learning and in
particular its text-only interface provided by "Betsie".  This does not
appear to have been discussed on Link before (and in researching this claim
I came across the cute Dick and Jan Search instructions page at 
http://online.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/search.html )

Instead of having to either maintain separate text-only pages, or keep page
design really boring to suit text only browsers and speech synthesis,
Betsie takes the approach of invoking a parser from each page which
reorganises the page for best text only reading.  I think this has been
implemented very elegently on the NGFL site. Click on the text-only link
from any page on the site 
http://www.ngfl.gov.uk

And check out the impressive customisation options from the "Text-only
version set-up options" link.

More details on Betsie at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/specials/bett_99/newsid_254000/25
4412.stm

== quote ==
BBC Education has produced a new piece of software to help blind and
visually impaired people navigate the Internet.

The program is being released free as 'open source' software in the hope
that others will take it up and develop it further - asking only that if
they do so, they notify BBC Education.

The program is called Betsie - an acronym for BBC Education Text to Speech
Internet Enhancer. 
...
Betsie takes heavily-formatted Internet pages and strips out the text into
a more accessible form. The developers claim it works far better than
existing programs of its type.
== end quote ==

I wonder how well it would have worked on the Olympics site??


Cheers
Jack


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Jack Gilding                          mailto:jack@backroad.com.au 
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