Excessive Screen Reader Feedback while typing in the integrated terminal

[rperez030]

Type: Bug

When using the terminal in VSCode with screen reader support, the terminal input field mistakenly triggers live updates. This issue results in the screen reader reading the entire content of the text field twice with each keypress, which is not the intended behavior. I believe the terminal input field may have been accidentally included in an aria-live region.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open VSCode and navigate to the terminal.
2. Ensure your screen reader is active but has the key character echo and word echo features turned off.
3. Type a phrase in the terminal, such as "this is a test."
4. Observe that after each keypress, the full content of the terminal input field is redundantly read by the screen reader.

Expected Behavior

When typing in the terminal with keyboard echo turned off, the screen reader should remain silent, preventing disruptive and unnecessary feedback.

Actual Behavior

Each keystroke results in the entire terminal input being read aloud, even with key echo features turned off,.

CC @meganrogge

VS Code version: Code - Insiders 1.99.0-insider (b59ae26, 2025-03-13T09:44:45.504Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10610U CPU @ 1.80GHz (8 x 2304)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	47.76GB (32.59GB free)
Process Argv	. --enable-proposed-api msft-1es.es-chat --crash-reporter-id bc5798b9-59a5-4bd3-88aa-596610b38a0f
Screen Reader	no
VM	40%

A/B Experiments

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[meganrogge]

Hi @rperez030 thank you for the issue. Can you reproduce this in VS Code stable?

[meganrogge]

here's a recording with sound that follows your steps (it cut off the first part) on macos with voice over and i'm not reproducing the issue.

but has the key character echo and word echo features turned off.

How do I do that? will try now

demo.mov

[meganrogge]

In VoiceOver settings, I just changed the text setting to while typing speak... to nothing. I still am not seeing the issue you're describing. When i do that, I don't hear anything unless I use arrow keys.

[rperez030]

Hi @rperez030 thank you for the issue. Can you reproduce this in VS Code stable?

Good question. I cannot reproduce it in the stable version. I can reproduce it using macOS VoiceOver, but it is not as consistent as it is on Windows. I have to type very slowly, and it only seems to fail for the first few letters.

To adjust verbosity while typing in VoiceOver, open the VoiceOver Utility and navigate to Verbosity / Text. Under "While Typing Speak," select "Nothing." Alternatively, press VO + V anywhere in the system, press the right arrow until you hear "Typing Echo," and use the up/down arrows to select "Nothing."

[meganrogge]

In both stable and Insider's, using VoiceOver with the While typing speak: Do Nothing, I hear the same - no chars are announced unless I navigate with arrow keys. I can also reproduce that in the default mac terminal.

I do not hear live announcements while typing though.

May I ask why you've adjusted that setting? Is it usually set to Do nothing for you?

[meganrogge]

Maybe a screen recording would help?

[rperez030]

May I ask why you've adjusted that setting? Is it usually set to Do nothing for you?

Right. I need silence while typing, otherwise I get very distracted. I did some debugging with NVDA on Windows, and there is definitely a live region changed event that fires for every key press.

Hook received winEvent: EVENT_OBJECT_LIVEREGIONCHANGED, window 1772494 (Chrome_RenderWidgetHostHWND), objectID OBJID_CLIENT, childID -1873, process 1264 (code - insiders), thread 24332

screen recording coming up.

[meganrogge]

Got it and thanks - do you have any settings related to the terminal?

[rperez030]

I'm not aware of any setting, but I can try creating an empty profile to double-check. like I say in the recording, this is particularly disruptive when using GitHub Copilot in agent mode because when the agent enters a command in the terminal, it creates and endless string of text.

2025-03-13.15-23-38.mp4

[Tyriar]

@meganrogge this is the code that handles these events which hasn't changed in a while:

https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/blob/2042bb85023714e55c0c2e986b5000e33b17c414/src/browser/AccessibilityManager.ts#L41-L50

The charsToConsume part suppresses incoming input later on:

https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/blob/2042bb85023714e55c0c2e986b5000e33b17c414/src/browser/AccessibilityManager.ts#L141-L149

It's more complicated here because we have the input event (that a screen reader may echo), and then the asynchronous "draw" to the terminal later on. So it doesn't work like a lot of web content.

---

The problem here looks like it's PSReadLine being activated. I actually spotted this recently, I think the issue is here:

vscode/src/vs/workbench/contrib/terminal/common/scripts/shellIntegration.ps1

Line 165 in 38d1f29

$ContinuationPrompt = (Get-PSReadLineOption).ContinuationPrompt

We need that to be if (Get-Module -Name PSReadLine) { to not implicitly load the PSReadLine module.