Text Only: Using the Lift Text Transcoder

ITServices of Queen's University has purchased and installed on Queen's main server a product called Lift Text Transcoder, developed by UsableNet Inc. This server-side application creates text-only web sites automatically upon the click of a link without the need to maintain parallel text-only web sites and with minimal work by web developers, designers, and editors. The web site developer/editor need only put a link to the Lift Text Transcoder on their site and Lift Text Transcoder will do the rest. When Lift Text Transcoder is fully implemented, it will improve the accessibility of the University web sites, thus reducing an access barrier and fulfilling a commitment in the University's ODA Plan. Queen's is the first Canadian post-secondary institution to implement the Lift Text Transcoder solution.

While the addition of the Lift-Text link is no replacement for properly developed, fully accessible web pages, Queen's web editors are encouraged to include a text-only links for automatic transcoding of all their legacy pages, which may have been developed without accessibility in mind.

How it works

Much of the power of Lift Text Transcoder is derived from annotations that tell it how to render specific web elements, such as JavaScript. These annotations are developed by UsableNet on a site-by-site basis, and our license allows us to contact UsableNet at any time when we become aware of a page or pages that don't transcode properly.

Test Lift Text on a web page

We invite you to take Lift Text Transcoder for a test drive. There are two ways to do this, manually and automatically.

To try Lift Text Transcoder manually, visit http://transcoder.usablenet.com/tt/ and enter the url of the page you want to transcode. If you try a site at Queen's that you feel doesn't transcode as well as the above-mentioned sites, send the url to itinfo@post.queensu.ca.

On Queen's homepage (www.queensu.ca) the "Text Only" link in the footer is handled by Lift Text Transcoder.

There are two href options for creating the text-only link URL to have your web site transcoded automatically. To use on a template or on many pages without having to be changed each time, use http://transcoder.usablenet.com/tt/referrer . This link uses the referrer feature in a browser to tell Lift Text Transcoder which page to transcode and pass back as text only.

To use the transcoder on a specific page, use a hard fixed URL. For example, use http://transcoder.usablenet.com/tt/http://www.queensu.ca for a text-only version of the page at http://www.queensu.ca .

If you have questions about the Lift Text Transcoder, contact itinfo@post.queensu.ca.