PSReadLine accessibility announcements vary between PowerShell 5.1 and 7.x in Windows Terminal

Answer the exact question first

PSReadLine itself does not generate UI Automation events. The announcements you hear come from the console host that renders the line: conhost.exe for PowerShell 5.1 and the Windows Terminal renderer for PowerShell 7.x. Because those hosts expose different sets of UI Automation events, screen readers report cursor movement and inline edits inconsistently between the two environments.

Likely explanation

• In Windows Terminal, PSReadLine edits are drawn by the terminal’s rendering pipeline, which may not expose every character change or cursor move to UI Automation.
• Changing -EditMode Windows aligns PSReadLine’s keystroke handling with Windows Terminal’s model but does not alter the host’s surface.
• There is no public, stable contract in PSReadLine releases that guarantees screen‑reader announcements; accessibility support is implicit and host‑dependent.

Confirmed facts

• PSReadLine does not emit UI Automation events on its own.
• conhost.exe surfaces most cursor moves and text changes to screen readers, whereas Windows Terminal’s current implementation may omit some events.
• Setting -EditMode Windows only changes the editing logic.
• No upcoming PSReadLine release notes mention a formal accessibility contract.

Steps to verify on your system

1. Open PowerShell 7.x in Windows Terminal.

   Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Windows

2. With a screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, Narrator) active, move the cursor left/right and note whether each movement triggers an announcement.
3. Paste a multiline string and observe whether the screen reader reports the inserted characters.
4. Repeat the same test in PowerShell 5.1 running in the legacy console host (conhost.exe) and compare the results.
5. If possible, enable Windows Terminal’s experimental UI Automation logging via settings.json to capture event data and correlate it with screen‑reader output.

What to do if announcements are missing

• Try updating Windows Terminal to the latest preview; newer builds may expose more UI Automation events.
• Verify that the screen reader is configured for “Terminal” mode; some readers need this setting to listen to terminal hosts.
• If the issue persists, consider using the legacy console host for PowerShell 7.x by launching powershell.exe instead of wsl.exe or pwsh.exe in Windows Terminal.

Missing diagnostic detail

To tailor the recommendation further, please let us know the Windows Terminal version and the Windows build number you are running.