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Can anyone else read text they're writing in the latest #Thunderbird with #NVDA 2024.3? I couldn't in one email and thought it was a fluke, but I'm sending another and it's happened again. I can copy to notepad and type there, but that's just silly. I thought I might have an addon loaded that was breaking stuff but apparently not. This is a bad time.
#thunderbird #nvda

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in reply to Andre Louis

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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Next time this happens, can you tell me whether restarting NVDA fixes it? There's a bug impacting NVDA and browsers which causes this kind of behaviour that no one has been able to track down yet. It's utterly bizarre. But restarting NVDA fixes it, hence the question.
in reply to Jamie Teh

Andre Louis
Andre Louis
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I... Thought I'd tried that because it's so damn obvious but apparently I hadn't. Restarting did fix it. Now I feel stupid. Thanks for suggesting it.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Andre Louis

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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It's a very exasperating bug regardless. Believe me, I've tried to track it down, but I still don't know wtf causes it. It's some deep failure somewhere in the Windows COM framework but I don't understand how NVDA is triggering it.
in reply to Jamie Teh

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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For your reference, this is being tracked here: github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issue…

Text editing suddenly becomes broken until NVDA restart · Issue #16020 · nvaccess/nvda

Steps to reproduce: Unfortunately, I cannot provide any steps, it happens suddenly and without an apparent reason. Actual behavior: While I'm writing something in a browser, like a comment on Faceb...
GitHub
in reply to Jamie Teh

Nikola Jović
Nikola Jović
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@jcsteh That one, together with the same failure with table navigation hotkeys requiring a restart to work are my only two annoyances when using Firefox with NVDA. I encounter them both daily here and really wish you the best of luck with finding the solution, I can understand the difficulty.
@Jamie Teh
in reply to Jamie Teh

Dave Taylor
Dave Taylor
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@jcsteh I still think NVDA is my favourite screen reader, but it seems to me to be having conflict with more and more apps. I mean, why does shutting down Tweesecake take NVDAwith it most of the time, for instance? That's a really odd one.
@Jamie Teh
in reply to Dave Taylor

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@davetaylor2112 Probably worth filing a bug about that with log files, testing with all add-ons disabled, etc.
@Dave Taylor
in reply to Jamie Teh

Dave Taylor
Dave Taylor
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@jcsteh 1. Remember, the average user is not a dev, and probably hates Github, like Ido. 2. I really feel that addons need regulating a lot more, and being broken a lot less. Things are getting less and less smooth and we seem to be needing ever more and more complex addons just to do basic things like navigate our email folders and messages! 3. Sadly, we are running out of keystrokes and this is making even more problems and conflicts. I increasingly feel like giving up with computers, to be honest.
@Jamie Teh
in reply to Dave Taylor

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@davetaylor2112 Fair enough. Entirely your choice, but if you want any chance of a diagnosis and fix, that's how you increase that chance. Devs can only do so much when the info available is near 0.
@Dave Taylor
in reply to Jamie Teh

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@davetaylor2112 I get the frustration, really I do. I often say that having a disability in general is like death by a million papercuts. That doesn't change the fact that devs can't help you with near 0 info, though. But everyone runs out of spoons and this may just be something you don't have the spoons for, and that's fine. You just can't expect a fix either.
@Dave Taylor
in reply to Jamie Teh

Dave Taylor
Dave Taylor
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@jcsteh You know what? Ijust had an idea, but I'm not fighting with Github to submit it. NVDA could do with a crash reporter, and if that's included in the usage stats, I suggest the dialog entry is changed to mark that
@Jamie Teh
in reply to Dave Taylor

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@davetaylor2112 Perhaps, but it may not be a crash. It's more likely to be a hang, and a crash reporter can't catch those.
@Dave Taylor
in reply to Jamie Teh

TJ Olsen
TJ Olsen
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@jcsteh I've frequently had a similar problem in Outlook
@Jamie Teh
in reply to TJ Olsen

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@tjolsen Outlook is very different code, so likely to be a different bug, though I can't be 100% certain of that.
@TJ Olsen
in reply to Jamie Teh

Simon Jaeger
Simon Jaeger
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@jcsteh This happens to me and restarting it fixes it. What can I do to help troubleshoot?
@Jamie Teh
in reply to Jamie Teh

Quin
Quin
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@jcsteh I have this all the time in both Thunderbird and Discord, and a restart fixes it.
@Jamie Teh
in reply to Quin

Alex Hall
Alex Hall
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@TheQuinbox @jcsteh I have it in Thunderbird and Slack from time to time. Restarting NVDA has worked so far.
@Quin @Jamie Teh
in reply to Alex Hall

Alex Hall
Alex Hall
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@TheQuinbox @jcsteh Funnily enough, the problem happened in Slack just after I sent that last post. The log shows that NVDA has the right value for the text field, but arrowing only says "blank". Selecting text works, in that NVDA speaks the selection. Deleting also usually works, speaking the deleted character. It's arrow navigation that's broken. Arrowing shows no problems in the log.
@Quin @Jamie Teh
in reply to Alex Hall

Tuukka Ojala
Tuukka Ojala
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@alexhall @TheQuinbox @jcsteh Can confirm. Sometimes this happens in Slack when there's a modal open that covers the area visually but doesn't have keyboard focus. Dismissing it sometimes restores the field back to working. Likewise, restarting NVDA doesn't fix the issue when I haven't dismissed that modal.
@Alex Hall @Quin @Jamie Teh
in reply to Tuukka Ojala

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@tuukkao @alexhall @TheQuinbox My guess is that this particular instance is likely to be a different bug. Based on what I do know about the problem, I can't fathom why a visually obscuring modal would trigger it. Still, it's a data point to consider.
@Alex Hall @Quin @Tuukka Ojala
in reply to Jamie Teh

James Scholes
James Scholes
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@jcsteh Slack's dialog component has some bugs related to when aria-hidden is applied to the rest of the UI. But for what it's worth, this happens for me regardless of whether a dialog is open or not, and it was one of the first things the Slack team looked at while debugging it. So I think they're different issues that just manifest in a similar way. @tuukkao @alexhall @TheQuinbox @FreakyFwoof
@Alex Hall @Quin @Tuukka Ojala @Jamie Teh @Andre Louis
in reply to James Scholes

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@jscholes @tuukkao @alexhall @TheQuinbox Oh yeah, I'm definitely aware of the aria-hidden modal bug. It drives me absolutely wild on a semi-regular basis.
@Alex Hall @Quin @James Scholes @Tuukka Ojala
in reply to Alex Hall

Jamie Teh
Jamie Teh
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@alexhall @TheQuinbox NVDA unfortunately catches and swallows the relevant exception without logging it. That's something I want to fix at some point so it's at least more obvious when this bug is occurring.
@Alex Hall @Quin
in reply to Andre Louis

Cleverson
Cleverson
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@DavidGoldfield It's reading normally here; no issues. Thunderbird 128.1.0, NVDA 2024.3 RC1.
@David Goldfield
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