Accessibility

Since 2.2.0, everything in Zasper can be reached from the keyboard, and a screen reader is told what each part of the window is, what a cell holds and when a run ends. This page covers what works and how. Key Bindings lists every shortcut.

Moving Around the Window

F6 moves the focus to the next part of the window and Shift+F6 to the previous one, in this order: the editor, the panel under it, the agent panel, the activity bar and the sidebar. Parts that are hidden are skipped, and each part gets back the place the focus last had in it, so F6 into the terminal and back lands in the same cell.

F6 is the way out of a terminal or a code editor, which keep Tab for themselves: the terminal sends it to the shell, and an editor indents with it.

The parts are landmarks, so a screen reader’s landmark keys jump between them too. The window’s title names the file in front.

Menus, Dialogs and Lists

• Menus take the focus when they open. ↑ and ↓ move through them, Home and End go to the first and last item, and typing a letter goes to the next item that starts with it. Escape or Tab closes the menu and gives the focus back to what opened it.
• A file tree row’s menu opens with Shift+F10 or the menu key, as a right-click would.
• Dialogs keep the focus inside them while open, so Tab does not wander into the window behind, and give it back to what opened them when they close. Window shortcuts do nothing while a dialog is open.
• The command palette is a combobox: a screen reader hears each option, its group and how many results the search found.
• The tab strip is a tab list. ← and → move along it, Home and End go to its ends, Enter or Space brings the focused tab forward, and Delete closes it.
• Toolbars are a single Tab stop; the arrow keys move between their buttons.
• Escape closes one thing at a time: the tooltip, the menu or the dialog on top, never two at once.

Notebooks

• Each cell is named by its position, its type and its run, such as “Cell 3, code, run 5”, and its editor as “Source of cell 3”. A screen reader hears when a cell finishes or fails, and when the kernel starts, restarts, dies or comes back.
• Only the focused cell’s controls are in the Tab order, so Tab does not walk through every cell’s toolbar. One Escape leaves a cell’s editor.
• A long output is a Tab stop while it scrolls: the arrow keys and Page Down move through it. Shift+O in command mode expands or collapses a cell’s output.
• An image output is described by its text/plain, such as matplotlib’s <Figure size …>.
• input()’s reply box is labelled with its prompt, and getpass() is masked.
• A data grid is a Tab stop. Arriving by keyboard selects its first cell, the arrow keys move the selection, and ⌘C / Ctrl+C copies it. A column’s edge can be focused, and ← and → resize the column.

Saves, an agent’s replies and a setting that failed to save are announced as well.

The Terminal

Settings → Terminal → Screen reader mode puts what a terminal prints where a screen reader reads it. It is off by default, as in VS Code, because it keeps a hidden copy of the terminal’s rows. It applies to terminals already open as well.

Seeing the Focus

There is one focus ring, the same everywhere, and it meets WCAG’s 3:1 contrast for non-text on every surface it lands on, in every theme. Text, the edges of fields and git’s colours meet WCAG AA contrast in every theme, with a few exceptions still being worked on, such as accent-coloured text in the dark themes and some terminal colours in the light orange theme. Links in prose are underlined.

Under forced colours, such as Windows’ contrast themes, the selection, a control’s state and dialogs stay visible: Zasper’s accent colour becomes the system’s highlight colour.

Reporting a Problem

If something cannot be reached from the keyboard, or a screen reader misses or misreads something, please open an issue saying which screen reader and browser you use.