The Lynx Text Browser is a text-based web browser alternative for the visually impaired. Operated through a command window or Unix terminal, this browser is a multi-platform, lightweight application that only fetches the text content from webpages. It is also designed to be used with text-to-speech software. However, I never managed to get that component to work with this browser.
Instead, this review will be based on Lynx's ease of use and functionality.
The browser is simplistic to say the least. Without reading the instruction manual, I was able to use the browser to navigate links and scroll down webpages in the browser.
The [up] and [down] arrow keys are used to cycle through links on a webpage. The [left] and [right] arrow keys are used to go to the previous webpage or to go into the selected link, respectively.
A couple of issues however, arise from this browser. Text based browsers such as this one ignore all images, Flash objects, and Javascript objects. This makes it difficult to read/view content on some online shopping sites and photoblogs, for example. In addition, if the text is talking about the picture displayed, the Lynx user will have no idea what that picture is. Let alone, the user won't even know that a picture exists! However, we can leave this as to poor accessibility on the web designer's end.
With the rise of HTML5 websites, it seems to be web accessible friendly. The Pixel Blast website, is a great example of an HTML5 programmed website that is both web accessible (i.e. important content of each page on this site can be read by the Lynx browser) and did not have to compromise in layout design.
In short, the Lynx browser is great for browsing the web, given that the visited sites will not heavily depend on JavaScript design functions. There is an advantage to not loading images, Flash, and JavaScript features. The performance of the browser in terms of loading content is quick. With the upcoming HTML5, web content and outstanding design does not have to be compromised for web accessibility.
