The main advantage of text-only browsers is that they are completely accessible to blind users using screen readers. As a result they are considered to be much easier for a blind user using a screen reader to use than other types of browser e.g. a GUI browser. However using a text-only browser means that a blind user may not be able access some elements of a website as easily as they would using another type of browser e.g. multimedia. Information about some of the text-only browsers that are available is given below.
The Lynx browser was created at the University of Kansas in the United States and is completely accessible to screen readers. It is considered to be the first modern text browser. Lynx generally supports complex HTML markup including forms, frames and tables. More information about the Lynx browser can be found on the LYNX website.
Lynx Viewer and LynxIT at are hosted by Salt Lake City Community College Lynx Viewer removes the ability to tab through links or follow them. Some links are replaced by INLINE, and others with | separator are only reported as text with | separator. LynxIT also treats web pages as text only pages but it does this through a form-based service. It allows specification of display attributes including numbering links, displaying table for contents of links, showing visibly where image links point, converting selection fields in form from popup lists to radio buttons.
Lynx Viewer and LynxIT can be very useful testing tools for a web developer because they show a web developer how their page will look in a text-only browser. A text-only browser can give a realistic indication of how that page will then be interpreted by a screen reader. Lynx-IT can be found on the Salt Lake Community College website. Alternativly a web developer can use the LYNX Viewer tool.
Emacs/W3 is completely accessible to screen readers and has all the functionality of a GUI browser. It also works with EMACSPEAK. Emacs/W3 supports forms, frames, tables and style sheets. It works with UNIX, Windows 95/NT, Os/2, and VMS. All font and formatting control is done using default W3C Cascading Style Sheets, which a user can override if necessary. Here is more information about Emacs/W3.
BETSIE was created by the BBC and the RNIB in 1998, it automatically creates a text-only version of a website. When a user makes a request for a web page, Betsie remove all the images and other formatting, so that only the text of the page is display, with headings at the top in their original form.
However BETSIE will only work on web pages within the BBC’s website and even then it may not work on all of the pages in the BBC site. It is estimated that there approximately 5% of pages within the BBC website that BETSIE cannot convert to text-only. At present the BBC considers these pages to be inaccessible. However they are to enhance BETSIE so that it will be able to create text-only version of the pages that are currently inaccessible. More information about Betsie can be found on the BBC website.
Links is a text browser that runs on the UNIX and OS/2 operating systems Links has the following features: