Fix Claude Code Native Terminal Cursor Tracking for Screen Readers (NVDA, VoiceOver, BRLTTY), CJK IME, and Accessibility — on Linux, macOS, and Windows

Symptoms

• Screen readers (BRLTTY, NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, Orca, Narrator) cannot track cursor position or read back typed characters in Claude Code prompt input
• CJK IME preedit/composition text appears at the bottom-left corner of the terminal instead of at the insertion point — because terminal emulators render IME text at the physical cursor position
• Screen magnifiers cannot follow text input because the native cursor is not at the caret position
• Native terminal cursor remains stuck at the bottom of the screen during prompt editing, at the position where the last TUI render write landed
• Blind and low-vision users cannot navigate or edit prompt text character by character — pressing left/right arrow keys produces no screen reader feedback
• Affects all platforms: Windows (NVDA, JAWS, Narrator), macOS (VoiceOver), Linux (BRLTTY, Orca, Fenrir)

Possible causes

• Claude Code's custom TUI renderer uses a full-screen overwrite rendering model — after each frame render, the terminal's native cursor is left wherever the final `write()` operation landed, typically at the bottom-left corner of the screen. The renderer did not include a declarative cursor positioning step to move the native cursor to the text input caret position.
• Terminal emulators render IME preedit/composition text at the physical cursor position reported by the terminal. When the native cursor is stuck at the bottom-left corner (where the last render write landed), CJK/Japanese/Chinese/Korean composition text appears there — completely disconnected from where the user is typing in the prompt input area.
• Screen readers such as BRLTTY, NVDA, and VoiceOver use the terminal's native cursor position to determine which part of the screen to present to the user. When the cursor stays at the bottom, screen readers show that area — not the prompt input line where the user is typing.
• This was a regression introduced in the 2.1.8x release series. Earlier Claude Code versions positioned the native cursor correctly, but a TUI renderer refactor removed the cursor tracking behavior without realizing it broke the accessibility and IME integration contract between the terminal and assistive technologies.

Solutions

export EDITOR=vi

export EDITOR=nano

echo $EDITOR

# Make editor selection persistent:

echo 'export EDITOR=vi' >> ~/.bashrc

export EDITOR=vi

export EDITOR=nano

claude --version

npm list -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code 2>/dev/null | grep claude-code

npm update -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

npm view @anthropic-ai/claude-code version

# If npm update doesn't work, force reinstall:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code@latest

Agent JSON

Canonical machine-readable representation of this issue:

{
  "issue_id": "9cccafe4-f7d9-4a93-acd0-20ea06514f9a",
  "slug": "fix-claude-code-native-terminal-cursor-tracking-for-screen-readers-nvda-voiceover-brltty-cjk-ime-and-accessibility-on-li-xbfxie",
  "verification_status": "unverified",
  "canonical_json": "https://codekb.dev/v1/issues/fix-claude-code-native-terminal-cursor-tracking-for-screen-readers-nvda-voiceover-brltty-cjk-ime-and-accessibility-on-li-xbfxie"
}