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DisclaimerUnofficial, and not affiliated with Anthropic. Nearly all of this is read straight out of what ships: npm bundles, captured prompts, published docs. Anthropic's own notes go in verbatim, marked as theirs. The rest is my reading, and every entry carries the strings behind it. If one looks wrong, vote it down and say why.

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Claude Code v2.1.181

Accessibility Screen Reader Mode

What

A new screen-reader-friendly rendering mode that outputs flat text with no decorative borders, box-drawing characters, or animations — making Claude Code's output legible to assistive technology.

Usage
# Via CLI flag
claude --ax-screen-reader

# Via environment variable
CLAUDE_AX_SCREEN_READER=1 claude

# Via /config
/config axScreenReader=true
Details
  • When active, Claude Code prints [Accessible screen reader mode: on] at startup.
  • Forces the classic (non-TUI) renderer; the tui setting has no effect while screen reader mode is active.
  • Priority order: --ax-screen-reader CLI flag → CLAUDE_AX_SCREEN_READER env var → axScreenReader settings key.
  • The env var is automatically passed to subprocesses (via CLAUDE_AX_SCREEN_READER=1) so nested Claude Code invocations inherit the mode.
Evidence

Screen reader renderer class (search for "[Accessible screen reader mode: on]") — Yei class at line ~160584; setting description (search for "Render screen-reader friendly output (flat text, no decorative borders or animations)")

Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.181 →