Usablenet Assistive and UA

The University of Alabama utilizes the Usablenet Assistive web accessibility platform to improve web accessibility, compliance, and support for people with disabilities including users of assistive technologies, such as blind people using screen-reading devices.

What is Usablenet Assistive?

Usablenet Assistive creates a dynamically generated, text-only, and accessible (compliant with standards such as ADA, Section 508, W3C, etc) view of a company’s entire web site and services. This view is not a ‘second’ site, but instead creates a dynamic accessible view of the main site that always reflects the most up-to-date content and services. As the main site changes constantly (in the way of enterprise web sites), each and every change is dynamically reflected in the accessible view created by the Usablenet Assistive platform.

What impact does this have on UA?

This software is licensed for use by all sites in the UA.edu domain, and allows webmasters to generate text-only versions of their sites very easily. This capability ensures that the University’s information and services are accessible for everyone despite physical, sensory or cognitive user disabilities, work constraints or technological barriers of users. Also, used in tandem with audible text-to-voice software, it makes using our sites much easier and rewarding for vision-impaired users. The text-only links have been implemented sitewide on UA.edu at the bottom of each page.

It is strongly recommended that all official and unofficial UA web sites utilize this text-only capability in order to ensure maximum accessibility for our visitors and ease of use for all users who desire simplified navigation of our sites.

How do I utilize Usablenet Assistive?

To utilize Usablenet Assistive on sites campus-wide in the UA.edu domain, you may add a link to each page in an easily-accessible location. The recommended location of the link is in the header or footer of your page, where other administrative links are located. To add the link to the dynamically-generated text-only versions, you need only:

1. Link to a relative URL using the 'referrer' variable.
This link dynamically generates a text-only version of any page on the UA.edu domain. You need only include the URL with the "referrer" variable, as below.
EXAMPLE: http://transcoder.usablenet.com/tt/referrer

2. Link directly to each specific page.
If you have reason to link directly to a text-only version of a page, you may link to it by adding the URL at the end of the string "http://transcoder.usablenet.com/tt/" as below.
EXAMPLE: http://transcoder.usablenet.com/tt/http://www.ua.edu

Questions?

If you have any questions about the use of Usablenet Assistive on your UA site, please contact Andy Rainey in the Office of Web Communications at arainey@ur.ua.edu.