diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index 4ab507db..dec1c730 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -5,9 +5,11 @@ python:
   - "3.2"
   - "3.3"
   - "3.4"
+  - "pypy"
 # command to install dependencies
 install:
   - pip install -r requirements.txt
   - python setup.py -q install
+  - if [[ ! $TRAVIS_PYTHON_VERSION == pypy ]] ; then pip install regex; fi
 # command to run tests
-script: nosetests
\ No newline at end of file
+script: nosetests
diff --git a/README.textile b/README.textile
index 5b40b021..b2cc5372 100644
--- a/README.textile
+++ b/README.textile
@@ -6,7 +6,9 @@ python-textile is a Python port of Textile, Dean Allen's humane web text generat
 
 h2. Installation
 
-Install the 'textile' folder on your python path, or @pip install textile@
+Install the 'textile' folder on your python path, or @pip install textile@.
+Optional dependencies include PIL/Pillow (for checking images size)
+and regex (for faster unicode-aware string matching).
 
 h2. Usage
 
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index f779102e..386c7744 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -2,12 +2,8 @@
 import os
 import sys
 
-install_requires = ['regex']
+install_requires = []
 
-try:
-    from collections import OrderedDict
-except ImportError:
-    install_requires.extend(['ordereddict>=1.1'])
 
 if 'develop' in sys.argv:
     install_requires.extend([
@@ -39,6 +35,9 @@ def get_version():
     ],
     keywords='textile,text',
     install_requires=install_requires,
+    extras_require={
+        ':python_version=="2.6"': ['ordereddict>=1.1'],
+    },
     test_suite='nose.collector',
     tests_require=['nose'],
     include_package_data=True,
diff --git a/textile/core.py b/textile/core.py
index c0877bea..d580bc6f 100644
--- a/textile/core.py
+++ b/textile/core.py
@@ -19,8 +19,6 @@
 
 """
 
-import re
-import regex
 import uuid
 
 from textile.tools import sanitizer, imagesize
@@ -48,6 +46,18 @@
     from HTMLParser import HTMLParser
 
 
+try:
+    # Use regex module for matching uppercase characters if installed,
+    # otherwise fall back to finding all the uppercase chars in a loop.
+    import regex as re
+    upper_re_s = r'\p{Lu}'
+except ImportError:
+    import re
+    from sys import maxunicode
+    upper_re_s = "".join([unichr(c) for c in
+        xrange(maxunicode) if unichr(c).isupper()])
+
+
 def _normalize_newlines(string):
     out = string.strip()
     out = re.sub(r'\r\n', '\n', out)
@@ -181,10 +191,10 @@ def __init__(self, restricted=False, lite=False, noimage=False,
             # plus/minus
             re.compile(r'[([]\+\/-[])]', re.I | re.U),
             # 3+ uppercase acronym
-            regex.compile(r'\b([\p{Lu}][\p{Lu}0-9]{2,})\b(?:[(]([^)]*)[)])'),
+            re.compile(r'\b([%s][%s0-9]{2,})\b(?:[(]([^)]*)[)])' % (upper_re_s, upper_re_s)),
             # 3+ uppercase
-            regex.compile(r"""(?:(?<=^)|(?<=\s)|(?<=[>\(;-]))([\p{Lu}]{3,})(\w*)(?=\s|%s|$)(?=[^">]*?(<|$))""" %
-                self.pnct_re_s),
+            re.compile(r"""(?:(?<=^)|(?<=\s)|(?<=[>\(;-]))([%s]{3,})(\w*)(?=\s|%s|$)(?=[^">]*?(<|$))""" %
+                (upper_re_s, self.pnct_re_s)),
         ]
 
         # These are the changes that need to be made for characters that occur
diff --git a/tox.ini b/tox.ini
index 6b44e57f..d1884662 100644
--- a/tox.ini
+++ b/tox.ini
@@ -8,3 +8,9 @@ deps = nose
        regex
        Pillow
 commands = nosetests --id-file=.noseids.{envname}
+
+[testenv:pypy]
+deps = nose
+       coverage
+       html5lib
+       Pillow