Spaces don’t require additional key presses, you press tab and it puts in X spaces. No one should be using the spacebar except for when you need to precisely align things. Arguably, no one should be pressing the tab key either, as most IDEs can automatically indent for you, and it doesn’t requires tabs or spaces.

Annecdotally, tabs don’t display nicely on some braille devices (saw someone mention this on the prettier tabs discussion while researching yesterday). This may come down to the specific device they use, or it could be entirely false, but all the arguments for tabs/spaces a11y have been anecdotal.

These are all reasons to prefer tabs, but none are reasons to require tabs. And hence, teams will make their own decisions based on what annoys/suits them most.

https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2022/08/11/virtual-formatter-in-resharper-2022-2/ https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/7475#issuecomment-668544890 - pro tabs

https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/7475#issuecomment-1169470712 - pro spaces, with some arguments for tabs

https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/7475#issuecomment-1169934190 - claims to be blind, no preference either way

Unfortunately I can’t find the tab display complaint, but it was anecdotal anyway. No one on the internet would lie…