has anyone who relies on assistive technology (screen readers or otherwise) tried Zed or one of its forks? https://zed.dev/blog/zed-1-0
whenever a new thing boasts about having reached "1.0", i get real curious about its accessibility. if it wasn't built with accessibility in mind, it becomes more difficult to make it accessible afterwards.
RE: https://toot.cafe/@matt/116488923759172749
i expected Zed would be inaccessible, since they built everything from scratch. but "zero accessibility" is just awful. there is no excuse for this.
(i appreciate everyone who replied with their experience)
@mayank Absolutely inaccessible.
Apr 29, 2026, 4:25 PM@mayank Zero accessibility with a screen reader, at least on Windows, and probably on other platforms too. *sigh* The AccessKit project has been there for them to use; it's a natural fit, since AccessKit and Zed are both written in Rust. You can implement a cross-platform accessibility abstraction, but you can't make developers care enough to use it.
@matt that's really unfortunate that they had a perfectly nice abstraction available that does the hard work for them but they couldn't be bothered to use it :/
Apr 29, 2026, 7:46 PM@mayank What you may not know is that I was one of the two primary developers of that abstraction. In my weaker moments I wonder if I should have given Zed some free labor, but I know that I can't be expected to do everything.
@matt i did recognize your name from accesskit (which is already in my starred repos). first time i've come across your name of fedi tho :)
and yes, fuck doing free labor, especially when they haven't shown any sign or willingness to make it accessible. they are very clearly content with the current state.
@mayank I tried it once, nothing was readable, nothing whatsoever, black box, as if they used some kind of immediate mode UI with it
Apr 29, 2026, 7:56 PM@mayank Given how much Zed caters to vibe-coders and/or is itself vibe-coded I have zero expectations whatsoever of 1.0 regarding stability or usability