Technical Details

This site uses web standards (including Cascading Style Sheets) to control page layouts and other design details. We aim to ensure that the mark-up language we use to structure the content of these pages follows transitional Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language (XHTML) rules. The site is compatible with past and present Web browsers, and is prepared for future compatibility.

If you would like further assistance please contact the Webmaster.

Plug-ins

To view some content on our site you will need to use a relevant software plug-in or stand-alone application. A plug-in allows you to view a document inside your browser window without having to save the file first.

Below is a list of file formats used on the BETR website which may require you to install a plug-in or stand-alone application.

Portable Document Format (PDF)

The most popular PDF viewer is Adobe Acrobat Reader, available as a free download from Adobe’s website. Adobe Acrobat Reader version 9 has enhanced accessibility features.

Adobe Systems provides a free translation service through its Access web pages which will translate PDF files to web pages (HTML documents).

This can be used in one of three ways:

  1. The user's browser can be configured to use this service as a helper application, so that every time they click on a link to a PDF document, this document is automatically sent to the Access server and returned as a web page.
  2. The user can go to the Access.adobe.com server and fill out a form. When this form is submitted, the server will retrieve the PDF document, translate it, and return it to the user.
  3. The user can send an e-mail message to the Access server, giving the address of the document to be translated. The server will then get this document and translate it to either a web page or a text (ASCII) document. Note that this is the only one of the three options that also gives the ability to produce a text document from the PDF file.

For systems that are not connected to the Internet, Adobe Access is a free downloadable accessibility plug-in for use with the latest versions of the Adobe Acrobat Reader for Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or Windows NT. This plug-in helps to overcome some of the problems of reading PDF documents with screen readers, but for systems with Internet access, Adobe recommends using the forms-based Access translation service instead.

If you would like further assistance please contact the Webmaster.

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