Codespaces and screen readers

Last Updated: January 28, 2025

For any developers on your team using a screen reader, they may experience issues using the Codespaces interface. Use the guidance below when using Codespaces with screen readers.

Developers using Codespaces with screen readers

Developers that use screen readers will likely encounter the following issues when accessing the Codespaces interface:

• Blind and visually impaired users may have difficulty understanding if full-screen mode is enabled. Typical screen reader keystrokes may not work until full-screen mode is enabled.

• Many screen reader users rely on screen reader keystrokes to navigate and comprehend the screen's contents and structure. Codespaces' keybindings conflict with those keystrokes. This makes using Codespaces with a screen reader very challenging.

• Codespace allows users to customize keybindings to an extent, but there are many known limitations. GitHub lists a few customization options on its website.

To work in Codespaces effectively, developers that use screen readers can use a local installation of Visual Studio Code with the GitHub Codespaces extension. This allows Codespaces to run natively on a computer, instead of as a Progressive Web App (PWA), which should work better with screen reader keystrokes.

Additional resources

Use the links below for more information:

• Codespaces documentation

• Codespaces walkthrough video

• Slack channel: #codespaces

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