Skip to content

Accessibility: Add verbosity setting, aria label hint, and keyboard shortcut to focus terminal from question carousel #312423

@meganrogge

Description

@meganrogge

Feature Request

When the askQuestions tool renders a question carousel triggered by a terminal interaction, users need accessible ways to navigate back to the terminal. Currently the "Focus Terminal" button is click-only with no keyboard shortcut, no keybinding hint in the aria label, and no verbosity setting to control the hint.

Proposed Changes

1. Verbosity setting

Add accessibility.verbosity.chatQuestionCarousel (boolean, default true) to control whether the carousel's aria label includes navigation hints (e.g., how to focus the terminal).

2. Keyboard shortcut

Register a new action workbench.action.chat.focusQuestionCarouselTerminal with keybinding Alt+T, scoped to:

  • inChatQuestionCarousel
  • chatHasQuestionCarousel
  • chatQuestionCarouselHasTerminal (new context key, set when the carousel has a terminalId)

This ensures the keybinding only activates when there's actually a terminal to focus.

3. Aria label with keybinding hint

  • The Focus Terminal button's aria-label should include the keybinding: e.g., "Focus Terminal (Alt+T)"
  • When verbosity is enabled and the carousel has a terminal, _updateAriaLabel() should append a hint: "Use Alt+T to focus the terminal."

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

accessibilityKeyboard, mouse, ARIA, vision, screen readers (non-specific) issuesfeature-requestRequest for new features or functionalityinsiders-releasedPatch has been released in VS Code Insidersverification-neededVerification of issue is requestedverifiedVerification succeeded

Type

No type

Projects

No projects

Milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions