[blindlaw] Web Access at U of VA

[David Andrews]

October 27, 2006
(Computerworld)
  -- The University of Virginia is using Lift Assistive from New 
York-based UsableNet Inc. to convert all of the school's Web pages 
into a format optimized
for users with disabilities, according to Nancy Tramontin, director 
of webmaster services at the university.

The school's home page and top-level pages have used the Lift 
Assistive software since 2004 and currently serve 3,000 to 4,000 
visitors per month, according
to a statement. The new universitywide licensing agreement with 
UsableNet allows any division, department or school to add a 
Lift-powered "text-only" version
of their Web pages, Tramontin said.

"This software provides a text version of all our Web pages so that 
they can be read by screen readers [which reads the contents of the 
screen aloud to
a user] so that people who are blind can read the text," Tramontin 
said. "We've had this software on most of the university's main 
pages, but it's now
going to be on every University of Virginia Web page. We'd like to 
see this on all of our pages by the end of the year."

Because the Lift Assistive software removes images from a Web page, 
the text can be sent to PDAs and cell phones, as well, she said.

Visitors can customize the accessible text-only Web pages by setting 
preferences for text size and color, according to the school. The 
Lift Assistive software
will be deployed on other popular Web resources, including the 
university's Web mail, its online course offering directory and 
automated class registration
system, and the MyUVA portal.

"There's a link at the top of the Web page that is hidden from visual 
browsers, but when a user with a screen reader visits the page they 
use key strokes
to hear a list of the page links, headers, images or other content," 
Tramontin said. "So they can use key strokes to say show me all the 
headers on this
page and then the user accesses the link to the text-only version 
where they remain for the duration of the visit on the site."

Angie Matney, a first-year law student at U.Va. who is blind, said 
the school's decision should make it easier for her to access pages 
using a program called
Jaws for Windows, from
www.freedomscientific.com
. "Jaws essentially converts the information on a Web page into 
speech or Braille output," she said. "The Lift program simplifies 
what's on the screen before
it is sent to Jaws."

Matney said she went through the link on the university's main page 
and pulled up the law school's sites and it did present a less 
cluttered view of the
Web pages.

"It was very well organized," she said. "Traditionally, a lot of Web 
sites will offer an alternate Web site in text-only form, and I tend 
to steer clear
of those because I found that they are not updated frequently. What I 
really like about the software that [the university] is using that it 
allows for
the dynamic, real-time creation of that alternate page."



David Andrews and white cane Harry.