TECHNICAL:
This is an overview of the software. More detail can be found at the BBC Education pages.

METHOD:
The software has been designed to rearrange the contents of a webpage in order to make it legible to surfers who use screen-readers or require a large-text or high-contrast display. Basically speaking, it automatically displays web page data in the following way...

CONTENT: Tabular or frame content is made linear, creating a standardised layout which is more easily followed. Table-related tags removed and replaced with <br> tags for clarity. Fonts, colours, size and background colours can be changed via links on each transcoded page. Imagemaps and stylesheets supported.

SCRIPTS: Java and Javascript content is filtered and removed and graphical elements are eliminated, with their "ALT" tags (when provided) being displayed in place of the image itself.

LINKS: For security reasons, a list of authorised URLs is hard-coded into the software. This prevents external sites from using the server resources and bandwidth of the machine the software is running on. Hyperlinks to sites not included in the software's 'safe list' are shown as '(External)', so that users know the link leads to a page which will be in its original untranscoded form.

FORMS: Works with most forms, including CGI-based forms and dropdown navigators. Will not work with forms which assume Javascript to be present (ie validated content).

EMBEDDED CONTENT: Keeps this intact, including Shockwave content.

There will always be a small percentage of webpages which don't work well through the software and sometimes sites throw up unexpected results. The BBC states that even 5% of their own website doesn't display correctly through the script, due to general page inconsistencies. Therefore, because the software is third-party and provided 'as-is', we offer a demo facility so that you may try the facility out with your chosen site before you purchase.

IMPLEMENTATION:
Betsie is written in Perl and is issued by the BBC under a free-to-use licence - we therefore don't charge for the software (you can download the script to install on your own server if you prefer). When you purchase an account from Text-only.info to use with your website, you are just being charged a fee for setup and subsequent use of server resources and bandwidth.

Each text-only account is created as a subdomain of http://text-only.info (in the form "http://account.text-only.info"), complete with CGI-BIN and a monthly bandwidth allocation. The software is installed for use with your specified domain only (to prevent other sites using your bandwidth) and you may then link to it from your site to use its transcoding feature.

The software only needs a hyperlink on any of your site's pages to work - you can re-use the same link in all your navigation. Just place "http://account.text-only.info/cgi-bin/text-only.pl" (substituting your account name) on all pages of your site and each page will be transcoded with a single mouseclick. It really is a 10-minute job!

Find out how you can demo the facility with your site...