Using Tmux with VoiceOver. Is it possible?

By Vsevolod Popov, 9 October, 2022

Forum
App Development and Programming

Hi all,
I use Arch Linux as my primary OS nowadays but I decided to use my old MacBook Air as laptop due to battery issues on my Windows/Linux laptop to check if it is possible to use MacOs for QA and Web Development tasks as a totally blind user.
I have some questions regarding terminal use with VoiceOver.
For example:
Is it really possible to use Tmux with VoiceOver?
I encounter that it is hard to use it fast enough as I can do it in Linux.
Session titles and windows numbers aren't announced, for example: "Coding 0 ZSH".
When removing characters that I typed with backspace key, I hear space instead of the character that I am removing.
I guess there is no sense in contacting Apple Accessibility about that? What do you think?
In Linux Tmux works perfectly with Orca.

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Comments

By Sebby on Monday, October 24, 2022 - 17:10

I'm a screen person when I've needed a multiplexer but frankly I think the problem here is VoiceOver itself. Try either using tdsr or a Linux VM with your screen reader of choice (my preference is for BRLTTY in textmode).

Slightly OT but what is your preferred desktop environment? I continue to look for choice of alternatives but macOS still remains king for me at the moment despite VoiceOver's many, many flaws.

By Vsevolod Popov on Monday, October 24, 2022 - 17:10

Hi.
I use Gnome currently, Mate isn't really good in terms of some things.
Also Gnome and KDE are planning to improve their accessibility.
But I rely mostly on Terminal, I try to do most of tasks there and the only thing I use GUI for is to use VSCode and browser.
As far as VM, what hyperviser do you use? I use Qemu on Linux but haven't tryed using it on Mac.
My experience with it was really bad on Windows, but I think it will be as good as on Linux in terms of Mac because they are both Unix systems.
If you use Qemu, how did you manage to connect a braille display to a VM?
What do you mean "I am more screen person"?

By Pax on Monday, October 24, 2022 - 17:10

Hi.
Screen is different multiplexer for UNIX systems.

By Sebby on Monday, October 24, 2022 - 17:10

I mostly use VMware (Fusion). It's compatible with other VMware software. UTM provides a quite nice and accessible frontend for qemu which you might look at. I use qemu only when I want a curses-based textmode VM from the command line when I am messing about with other operating systems but the GUI isn't native IIRC. VirtualBox used to be an option too, but seemingly not any more. vftool is a good way to get textmode Linux using Apple's native virtualization.framework hypervisor including Apple Silicon, but the flexibility is very limited and no direct USB support. Ditto bhyve/xhyve. If you are going to use GUI Linux I think you're going to go with either PMware or UTM.

By robertmeta on Thursday, November 24, 2022 - 17:10

I found the exact same frustrating behavior but only with iTerm2. I was happily surprised when it just worked (tm) in standard terminal.

By Vsevolod Popov on Saturday, December 24, 2022 - 17:10

I didn't install iTerm2. I start tmux using the standard Mac Terminal.

By arraze on Tuesday, October 24, 2023 - 17:10

The posts here have inspired me to try again. Having went completely blind a few years ago, but formally when sided a systems administrator, loving Lennox and FreeBSD, I have been for the most part, keeping myself to a preinstalled windows with a windows, native SSH client to connect to a virtual private server to develop in. If I am understanding the other posts correctly, were you able to install the linux distribution on your own or did you need Sighted assistance? Granted, I had tried screen reading as a Sighted user, but like most programmers did not go much further, and found it rather clunky. however that was 2015. Using gnome as mentioned earlier with orca would you say it is fairly straightforward to learn and acquainted yourself with also? I have been using NVDA on windows and find it is passable but my hope is that open source would have more eyes on the code to make it better. These are all considerations without personal experience so I ask for input as available. when I begin losing sight, I had tried macOS, but felt like voiceover was a finger pretzel solution ha. I will presume the present version of iOS had some of those wrinkles ironed out. Thank you in advance.