Accessible Claude Code

accessible-claude-code

A tiny PTY wrapper that makes [Claude Code](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code) (and other [Ink](https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink)-based TUIs) usable with a screen reader.

The problem

Claude Code's UI is built on Ink, which renders React components as ANSI escape sequences and repaints character cells in place. This is exactly the pattern that defeats screen readers: VoiceOver, NVDA, Narrator, and TalkBack all read the terminal's visible character grid, and they cannot tell a spinner frame flip apart from new content arriving. The result is stale or jumbled speech, spinners that spam TTS, and sessions that are effectively unusable for blind developers.

Upstream tracking: [anthropics/claude-code#11002](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/11002) is open and unimplemented.

What this does

`acc` forks your target process under a PTY, runs its output through a headless VT emulator ([`pyte`](https://github.com/selectel/pyte)), and diffs the cell grid on every flush. Instead of shoveling raw ANSI at the screen reader, it emits one clean, linearized stream of semantic events and speaks them via a pluggable backend (`say` on macOS, `spd-say` on Linux).

Architecture borrowed from [TDSR](https://github.com/tspivey/tdsr), the canonical terminal screen reader for macOS and Linux. This is a narrower, Claude-Code-first tool in the same tradition.

Status

Alpha. Proof of concept. macOS first, Linux tested via CI.

Install

git clone https://github.com/digitalby/accessible-claude-code
cd accessible-claude-code
python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Usage

acc claude            # wrap Claude Code
acc bash              # wrap any shell or TUI for experimentation
acc --rate 320 claude # speed up speech
acc --no-speak claude # dry run, log events instead of speaking

Hotkeys

Key	Action
Ctrl-\	Stop current speech (barge-in)
Ctrl-]	Re-read last ass