Browsers are programs such as Lynx, Netscape,and Mosaic. Their function is to request and display documents from remote servers on the World Wide Web. The use of screen readers with certain browsers can cause problems. For example, the screen reader may misinterpret various structures thereby rendering the page meaningless. Each programmer should test their pages on various browsers to ensure that information is displayed properly.
Each browser interprets and deals with information differently. Lynx, for example, is a text based browser and does not display images. However, even in cases where two browsers support the same element they may treat the information differently. For example, Mosaic shows the Alternative (ALT) Text while loading an image but Netscape does not. This means that information can be distorted or even absent depending on the browser used.