Users of VSCode on MacOs, please tell me that you have found a method of making it more accessible and usable? On Windows, the application is really efficient to use. But on Mac OS with Voiceover, even the code editor is really inefficient with Voiceover speaking extra unneeded text etc.
I would really appreciate your input.
Comments
Good on paper
But quite bad in practice, and as you said it's entirely because of voiceover. Honestly, nothing beats something like text mate + macos terminal in another window. When I really need something about dotnet (as I don't have the time or energy to learn dotnet cli) only then do I happily use vscode. But if jetbrains rider is probably built with the same core as intellij / pycharm so it will probably give me a better experience.
The terminal in vscode on mac especially, in practice it's the most painful experience ever imo.
It doesn't work well
That's one of the reasons why, sadly, I haven't been able to switch to a Mac from Windows with NVDA. It works a thousand times better. And Windows is a thousand times worse!
Re: Good on paper
Have you tried using TDSR? I found it more responsive and better in gneeral compared to Voiceover in the terminal
I agree...
I do not use VoiceOver exclusively (I have cognitive issues not visual) but even just the simple 'read text aloud' feature seemed totally borked for VSCode.
I always clock it up that VSCode seems to be an Electron App with a customized text-editor. Electron apps just seem to have a reputation of either not prioritizing accessibility or are just bad at it. (But then again Electron apps are just a glorified web pages).
That is my guess.
Staque
No.
For once, this is not electron but voiceover that's severely neglected on mac. vscode works very well on windows, with orca on linux, heck even vscode.dev is quite cool with chromevox on chromeos / chromeos flex! So this is purely voiceover. Web has always been very accessible outside macos and some blind users have a false fear of it. It's both apple fault and skill issues from the community. Harsh, but this is my honest opinion. Outside mac, with chromeos flex / windows and even orca on linux, I'd not mind to live my life in google docs everyday for example.
Re: No.
Microsoft application works well on Microsoft system? I'm shocked! You can make Electron apps work well on macOS even when they make their own accessibility, like Slack. Visual Studio Code behaves poorly on macOS because Microsoft just doesn't care, and they have no incentive to care.
Disable Word Wrap
If you have word wrap enabled, disabling it will get rid of editor inconsistencies where VoiceOver will start behaving abnormally. The shortcut is Option + Z. I think the last few months have witnessed regressions in the behavior of VoiceOver with the code editor.
Why is this like this? It seems to be a mix of Chromium bugs making their way to VS Code, as well as Microsoft's neglect. Using Microsoft Word will make you understand their mentality, unfortunately.
Moved to using Jetbrains Rider
I've found that Jetbrains Rider is a lot more usable and accessible than VSCode on Mac OS. But that's certainly not perfect either. For example, pressing command shift a, to open a similar functionality search in Rider compared to that in VSCode is really not very accessible. But still, it's a lot better than VSCode was on Mac OS>. Problem is, I've been using VSCode for years. I know how it works very well and I understand and can remember the many keyboard shortcuts that I need day to day. So this really isn't ideal.
Re: Moved to using Jetbrains Rider
Jetbrains IDEs do support different keyboard schemes. I've not tried this, but I did a quick check and it looks like you can set it to behave more like VS Code. See https://www.jetbrains.com/help/rider/Configuring_Keyboard_and_Mouse_Shortcuts.html
PyCharm settings can be a bit of a battle with VoiceOver but it's usually possible to get there with a little persistance.
If you find any specific issues it's worth submitting a bug report (you can do this directly from the Help menu). It might well sit there stewing forever but it definitely doesn't hurt and sometimes it does bear fruit.
Or just use TextMate
TextMate is pretty accessible. It doesn't support the Language Server Protocol so has no code completion among other IDE-like goodies, but this can be worked around by keeping the documentation open on the browser.
Somebody should really modernize textmate
I mean I have cot editor which is closest to text mate with VO and also bb edit I tried, the ui is not as good but it supports lsp, but text mate has a unique charm, the closest I found to notepad++ style on macos. It just works and is severely underestimated for modern days.
Opened an Issue For Vs Code
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/338956
Anyone affected is welcome to share there voice. Maybe there are other issues, that one is the most frustrating among them so I've started with it. Ideally all issues should be reported.