Text based browsers

Who are they helpful to

Text based browsers are used by people with poor eyesight.

What they do

Text-based browsers simply display the contents of the page as text. They do not support images, JavaScript, Java, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), plug-ins or dynamic HTML. They are extremely fast when browsing the web.

How they work

As with screen readers and refreshable braille displays, text-based browsers render content in a linear fashion. Pages are navigated using a variety of keyboard commands and cannot be interacted with using a mouse.

Alternative text for images is seen in place of the images. Lines represent text input boxes, square brackets [ ] indicate checkboxes and links are shown in a different colour on a text-based browser.

Extra info

It is vital for text-based browser users that websites obey the highest standards of coding for headers, links, and other page elements. We endeavour to maintain those standards on the GMC’s site.

More information

For further information please see the RNIB’s information on text-based browsers .