[mwcampbell]

Since you mentioned ed, I know of a blind programmer who actually likes and uses ed (or did last time I heard from him). In fact, he wrote his own version of ed that also includes a web browser, and called it edbrowse. To be sure, he's in the minority even among blind programmers. But for what it's worth, you can find an article that he wrote about his approach here: http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html

[uiri]

I am not blind but edbrowse is far and away the best non-GUI web browser I've ever used (better than elinks, lynx, etc). I highly recommend that sighted folk crack open the user manual and give it a try.

[avhon1]

I love edbrowse! I keep a copy handy; it's the only web browser I know of that is distributed as a single statically-linked executable. Great for getting through wifi login portals before installing packages.

http://edbrowse.org/