diff --git a/rest_framework/renderers.py b/rest_framework/renderers.py
index 41f4e0fc5..d041dd4f5 100644
--- a/rest_framework/renderers.py
+++ b/rest_framework/renderers.py
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ import json
 from django import forms
 from django.http.multipartparser import parse_header
 from django.template import RequestContext, loader, Template
+from django.utils.encoding import force_unicode
 from django.utils.xmlutils import SimplerXMLGenerator
 from rest_framework.compat import yaml
 from rest_framework.exceptions import ConfigurationError
@@ -439,13 +440,13 @@ class BrowsableAPIRenderer(BaseRenderer):
         try:
             return view.get_name()
         except AttributeError:
-            return view.__doc__
+            return force_unicode(view.__class__.__name__)
 
     def get_description(self, view):
         try:
             return view.get_description(html=True)
         except AttributeError:
-            return view.__doc__
+            return force_unicode(view.__doc__)
 
     def render(self, data, accepted_media_type=None, renderer_context=None):
         """
diff --git a/rest_framework/views.py b/rest_framework/views.py
index fa7425828..a3a3ac254 100644
--- a/rest_framework/views.py
+++ b/rest_framework/views.py
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ Provides an APIView class that is used as the base of all class-based views.
 from __future__ import unicode_literals
 from django.core.exceptions import PermissionDenied
 from django.http import Http404
+from django.utils.encoding import force_unicode
 from django.utils.html import escape
 from django.utils.safestring import mark_safe
 from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
@@ -96,7 +97,7 @@ class APIView(View):
         Override to customize.
         """
         # TODO: deprecate?
-        name = self.__class__.__name__
+        name = force_unicode(self.__class__.__name__)
         name = _remove_trailing_string(name, 'View')
         return _camelcase_to_spaces(name)
 
@@ -106,7 +107,7 @@ class APIView(View):
         Override to customize.
         """
         # TODO: deprecate?
-        description = self.__doc__ or ''
+        description = force_unicode(self.__doc__) or u''
         description = _remove_leading_indent(description)
         if html:
             return self.markup_description(description)