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About the Web Access Gateway

Welcome to the Web access gateway.  This is an online ``browser within a browser''; it gives you more control over how websites are displayed, regardless of which browser you have to use.  The gateway has two main purposes:
  1. To make the Web easier to access for print-disabled users (such as users with low vision or dyslexia);
  2. To allow speakers of other languages to view Web pages written in them, when the encodings are not supported by their browsers.  (This uses GIFs - see GIF Patent Problems and the Language Viewer)
Note: this program's support of Javascript is limited; you may find difficulties using it on modern "Web application" sites.  If you have a recent desktop browser, you might be better off using my stylesheets for low vision (although some web applications manage to break even on those).  Alternatively if you need a commercial "content adaptation" mediator with more complete Javascript support, try Openwave Web Adapter (I was on their team for 2 years and the American "Sprint" carrier licensed it), or possibly Opera Mini but that needs a special client. I don't know if Infogin etc ever got around to full Javascript support. Meanwhile Web Access Gateway is still sometimes useful so I'm leaving it up for now.

The gateway works by intercepting your Web browsing in such a way that the gateway computer can sort out the Web pages before you see them.  It works with all browsers and operating systems as long as the browser supports forms [1].  You can adjust it to work the way you want to.

If you need an academic paper about the gateway, try this:

Silas S Brown & Peter Robinson. A World Wide Web Mediator for Users with Low Vision.  CHI 2001 Workshop No. 14.  PDF format (hosted at ics.forth.gr)

The gateway can also (sometimes) be used as a rudimentary viewer of such things as Flash and WAP, if you have no other means of displaying them.  In the case of WAP, the intention is that print-disabled users can use WAP sites on their normal desktop browsers.


Following is a list of some of the sites that run the gateway publically.

If you are using the gateway to read a language, please select the ``Disable all sight-related access options'' box and then the ``Characters'' button.  Alternatively you can try one of the language entry pages.

Language entry pages: These are presets to help people get started in their languages more quickly, and only cover the languages most popular with the gateway; if your language is not listed then the gateway might still support it (in particular, it supports Korean characters, but my Korean isn't good enough to write an entry page in Korean).

Download

To install the access gateway on your Web server, you need a shell account with sufficient privileges.  FTP access is NOT sufficient.  If you do not have Unix then you have to install various Unix tools; this has been done but it would be simpler just to get a Unix shell account.  Some degree of Unix competence is assumed.

You will need to download access.tar.gz.  Create a directory for the access gateway to go in (different from the cgi-bin directory), change into that directory, unpack the .tgz file (using tar -zxf) and run ./install.sh.  This script should work on most Unix systems.  It will ask some questions, configure the gateway, compile it and install it.

The source is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.  There is absolutely no warranty.

The gateway has an extensions mechanism, which is documented in extenlib.h.

Usage

The online help gives detailed information about its use, and many users will be able to start without having to read the help.

A number of people have expressed an interest in using the gateway to preprocess their pages (ie. put up pages that have already been processed).  This can be used, for example, on sites that teach a language where character substitution is required.  I've added a hack that lets you do this:

  1. Go to the page in the gateway and adjust the options to your liking.
  2. Append &AP=1 (case is important) to the long URL and press Enter.  You should now get a version of the page that is suitable for saving as a standalone document.
  3. Save it.
You may wish to bookmark the long URL with the &AP=1, for when you update the page. If you have several pages that you want the gateway to process, you may wish to write yourself an update script that does all this for each page, for example, one containing commands like:

lynx -source "http://long-URL-goes-here&AP=1" > page1-preprocessed.html

Wildcards are also possible (using for).

Mailing list and bugs

There is now a mailing list for gateway users to support each other.  The traffic is very low.  Anyone is welcome to join.  To subscribe, send an email to majordomo@accu.org with the following command in the body of the message: 
subscribe access-gateway-users
An incomplete bug list is also available.
Dislcaimer: The author is not responsible for, and has no authority over, the websites that host the Access Gateway.  There is no warranty, either express or implied.  It is the user, not the author, that chooses which pages to process, and the author does not endorse (and is not responsible for) any illegal viewing or modification of data, whether the program is functioning properly or not.

[1] Technical footnote: If you do not have a browser that supports forms, or you are browsing the web via an email gateway, you can still use the access gateway if you know how to read HTML forms and generate CGI 'GET' URLs.  In fact, you can use the gateway to submit a 'POST' form using a 'GET' URL - the gateway itself really doesn't care which method is used, and will pass on the request as a 'POST' if you set the right parameter.
All material © Silas S. Brown unless otherwise stated.