Accessibility guidance for slash-command suggestion popups in AI assistants

[kamalyaser31]

Accessibility compatibility question: slash-command suggestion popups in AI assistants

I am a screen-reader user and would appreciate guidance from the NVDA community about an accessibility problem appearing in more than one AI assistant application.

What happens

When I focus the message/composer field and type /, a suggestion popup appears visually. I can often move through it with the arrow keys, but NVDA does not announce:

• the available command names;
• the role of each option;
• the current option;
• the position and total number of options;
• when the suggestion list opens or closes.

This makes the feature effectively unavailable to a screen-reader user, even though sighted users can see the popup.

Affected applications

The same pattern has been reported in at least:

• Z.ai feedback interface: Accessibility: Slash-command suggestion menu options are hidden from screen readers zai-org/feedback#108
• OpenAI Codex: Accessibility: Codex suggestion menu options are hidden from screen readers openai/codex#32375

Expected behavior

The application should expose the popup using standard accessible semantics, such as a listbox/option or menu/menuitem relationship, so NVDA can announce the option names, focus/selection changes, and position information.

Question for the community

Should this be reported and fixed primarily by each application, or are there NVDA-side compatibility techniques or diagnostics that could make these custom suggestion popups accessible? I have also opened a corresponding NVDA issue for technical triage:

#20532

I can provide an NVDA log and exact version details if the maintainers advise what information is needed.