There's TUI and there's CLI. TUI has always been poor man's GUI, back in the day it was even literally called GUI. CLI on the other hand has zero similarities with GUI. You write the command and the command executes and that's it. Writing commands is inherently the most accessible form of controlling computers, second only to dedicated single-purpose buttons that don't mesh well with this whole "general purpose computing" thing.

> The idea that it must be more accessible because it’s confined to a mono space typeface and communicates state mostly by changing the foreground and background color of the text it renders makes no sense to me.

That's not why. It's because TUI apps have to be designed around the strong possibility that a mouse isn't even available.

Also in a TUI you never ever have that issue that some text isn't copy/pastable like some dialogue boxes, in which case the screen reader might have issues picking it up too.

And in a TUI you don't have to deal with that window management crap. Moving stuff around because something else is on top. Everything happens within that little square.