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I'm a screen reader user and CTO of an accessibility company. This change doesn't reduce noise for me. It removes functionality. Sighted users lost convenience
by ctoth 8mo ago
I'm a screen reader user and CTO of an accessibility company. This change doesn't reduce noise for me. It removes functionality.
Sighted users lost convenience. I lost the ability to trust the tool. There is no "glancing" at terminal output with a screen reader. There is no "progressive disclosure." The text is either spoken to me or it doesn't exist.
When you collapse file paths into "Read 3 files," I have no way to know what the agent is doing with my codebase without switching to verbose mode, which then dumps subagent transcripts, thinking traces, and full file contents into my audio stream. A sighted user can visually skip past that. I listen to every line sequentially.
You've created a situation where my options are "no information" or "all information." The middle ground that existed before, inline file paths and search patterns, was the accessible one.
This is not a power user preference. This is a basic accessibility regression. The fix is what everyone in this thread has been asking for: a BASIC BLOODY config flag to show file paths and search patterns inline. Not verbose mode surgery. A boolean.
Please just add the option.
And yes, I rewrote this with Claude to tone my anger and frustration down about 15 clicks from how I actually feel.
- wahnfrieden 8mo agoTry Codex instead. Much greener pastures overall
- ctoth 8mo agoI do love my subagents and I wrote an entire Claude Code audio hook system for a11y but this would be still rather compelling if Codex weren't also somewhat of an a11y nightmare. It does some weird thing with ... maybe terminal repaints or something else that ends up rereading the same text over and over. Claude Code does this similarly but Codex ends up reading like ... all the weird symbols and other stuff? window decorations? and not just the text like CC does. They are both hellish but CC slightly? less so... until now.
- wahnfrieden 8mo agoIs it as bad with the Codex app, or VS Code plugin? They are much more responsive on GitHub issues than Anthropic so you could also try reporting your issue there
- TonyStr 8mo agoSorry for being off-topic, but isn't a11y a rather ironic term for accessibility? It uses a very uncommon abbreviation type -- numeronym, and doesn't mean anything to the reader unless they look it up (or already know what it means).
- huflungdung 8mo ago[dead]
- machiaweliczny 8mo agoFor now until they are in the lead
- bcherny 8mo agoHey -- we take accessibility seriously, and want Claude Code to work well for you. This is why we have repurposed verbose mode to do what you want, without the other verbose output. Please give it a try and let me know what you think.
- ctoth 8mo ago> we take accessibility seriously Do you guys have a screen reader user on the dev team? Is verbose mode the same as the old mode, where only file paths are spoken? Or does it have other text in it? Because I tried to articulate, and may have failed. More text is usually bad for me. It must be consumed linearly. I need specific text. Quality over quantity
- bcherny 8mo ago"Is verbose mode the same as the old mode, where only file paths are spoken?" -- yes, this is exactly what the new verbose mode is.
- CjHuber 8mo agoAnd how to get to the old verbose mode then...?
- bcherny 8mo agoHit ctrl+o
- bostonvaulter2 8mo agoWait so when the UI for Claude Code says “ctrl + o for verbose output” that isn’t verbose mode?
- bcherny 8mo agoThat is more verbose — under the hood, it’s now an enum (think: debug, warn, error logging)
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- duncangh 8mo agoDyslexic and also a prolific screen reader user myself. +1 and thank you for mentioning something that often gets (ironically) overlooked