Microsoft announced in 2019 the new [Microsoft Terminal](https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/) which will replace the old Conhost solution in everyday use.
## Advantages of MS Terminal
It has a high number of advantages. Very personalizable, works as a normal window which makes easier to support accessibility, multitab support, extended mark mode, customizable keyboard commands, profiles and more.
## The problem
MS Terminal not supported the communication with screen readers first. After that Microsoft introduced UIA support, NVDA followed it and now supports it well however JAWS users can not use the Terminal.
The following problems might occurs in JAWS in the everyday usage
- Randomly readed lines
- When reading with JAWS cursor, the window and text jumping and focus might be lost
- On SSH sessions, randomly announced informations, not work with ncurses apps and other issues which makes it very unconfortable
### Behind the problem
The JAWS script that built in J2025 uses a method that grabs the text from Terminal and with a timer make comparison which updates on defined events. Problem with this is that ncurses-based APPS (E.G. nano, VI, Pico) writes to their GUI to screen with characters which causes that JAWS detects a redraw on every character change (delete, insert). It is not good.
UIA is available, but JAWS still uses the own development.
Freedom Scientific until 2025-03-30 does not fix the problem so Terminal unconfortable.
- Fix UIA announcements to work with specified punctuation level and try to follow the line endings in the announcements to avoid the announcing of special chars with disabled punctuation level
- Turn on (temporarily) and off the indentation echo feature in Terminal with JAWSKEy+Shift+i command. Supported in text editors (Nano, Vim) and command outputs (E.G. `kubectl ... -o yaml` or `argocd ... -o yaml`).
- Read the bottom line, as toolbar in other APPs, with INS+PageDown
> Note: It works well if you use tmux or other APPs with sticky bottom line however it says nothing if you're in a simple Bash and press it. It announces the prompt or other text if the window fulfilled.
- Saying bad characters when try to mark text in mark mode. Workaround is to mark only lines with CTRL+up-down arrow and press CTRL-SHIFT-c to copy. Do not mark single characters or partialy section of lines
- Doubling characters in nano: when navigate with arrow keys, an annoying issue causes that sometimes characters, lines speaked duplicated. Currently no fix for this as if we disable UIA for arrow keys or the simple char or line read sometimes cause issues. To skip the problem be carefuly when navigating in editors.
