Does ESLint offer a built‑in plain‑text formatter that disables ANSI colors for screen‑reader accessibility?

Does ESLint have a built-in plain-text formatter?

ESLint does not provide a specific "plain-text" formatter that replicates the exact visual layout of the default stylish formatter while stripping colors. However, it provides the compact formatter, which outputs lint results in a standardized, color-free, single-line format that retains all critical structural information.

Implementation Options

Depending on whether you need a different structural layout or simply want to remove colors from the existing layout, use one of the following methods:

1. The Compact Formatter

The compact formatter is the built-in solution for non-color-dependent, human-readable output. It prints one problem per line in the format: file:line:column severity - rule-id: message.

eslint . --format compact

2. The NO_COLOR Standard

If you prefer the structural layout of the default stylish formatter but need to disable ANSI escape sequences for screen readers or CI logs, ESLint respects the NO_COLOR environment variable standard. Setting this variable forces the formatter to omit color codes regardless of the TTY status.

NO_COLOR=1 eslint .

Comparison of Accessible Outputs

Method	Layout	ANSI Colors	Best Use Case
--format compact	Single-line per error	No	Screen readers, grep, simple logs
NO_COLOR=1	Grouped by file (Stylish)	No	Human review without color dependency

Verification

To verify that ANSI escape sequences have been successfully removed, pipe the output to cat -v. If colors are present, you will see sequences like ^[[31m; if they are disabled, the output will be clean text.

eslint . --format compact | cat -v

Note: If you require a specific column-aligned layout that is not provided by compact or stylish, you would need to implement a custom formatter function and pass it via the --format flag.