While this is potentially more of an issue with xdg-open1 than dua, other TUI applications are able to handle this better (e.g. yazi).

My default editor is helix and my default file browser is yazi, both of which have .desktop files which indicate they are terminal applications. Currently, xdg-open will attempt to open terminal based applications using the same terminal it was called from, effectively attempting to take over the current terminal from dua, and while it appears as though the key presses are going through to the spawned app (i.e. q will exit yazi), the terminal window only displays the dua TUI.

Here's a demonstration of the issue that captures running instances of hx and yazi as well as displaying key presses: