mastodon - Link to source

NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2025.1 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version. This release introduces NVDA Remote Access, provides speech, braille, OCR & Office improvements, Native selection in Chrome & edge

Full info & Download: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1/

#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Accessibility #FOSS #NewVersion #Update #News #Free

Close up of NVDA Notification area icon

NV Access | NVDA 2025.1 Released

www.nvaccess.org
#Accessibility #foss #free #screenreader #nvdasr #News #update #nvda #newversion

reshared this

in reply to Dave Lane 🇳🇿

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@lightweight Afraid not. Screen readers work at a lot closer level with the OS than say a word processor - in order to make a Linux (or any other OS) version of NVDA, we'd need to completely rewrite the vast majority of the code - and some things might not even have an equivalent and would need to be completely redesigned. At this time, we feel our limited resources are best spent continuing to make the Windows version the best it can be - but thank you for your interest!
@Dave Lane 🇳🇿
in reply to rooktallon

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@rooktallon Normally when you select text on the web with NVDA (shift+arrows etc), it takes it from NVDA's virtual buffer, which ONLY contains text, so you lose formatting, images, etc. Native selection picks up everything: text, formatting, links, images etc. See download.nvaccess.org/releases… in the user guide for more details.

Note if you JUST want to save an image, you can usually do that by moving to it (G) then open the context menu and choose "Save image as"

NVDA 2025.1 User Guide

download.nvaccess.org
@rooktallon
in reply to Tyler Spivey

mastodon - Link to source

Sean Randall

@tspivey I hop between wsl, powershell, VS code and a couple of browser windows and sometimes whatever logic keeps track doesn't seem to work. i.e. I can't review output in wsl with NVDA+up/down without switching mode if I've been using the same keys to review the screen of a windows dialog or the document from a browser. It's not often, but I do sometimes need to manually adjust the mode.
@Tyler Spivey
in reply to Sean Randall

mastodon - Link to source

Andre Louis

@cachondo That's what I've tried to do for 22 years of sound-design. I have one very important rule which is that a sound should not exceed standard speech volume. If it does, or if it's too jarring, it's the wrong sound for the job, unless the job actually calls for that kind of thing. Never been my bag though. I don't like sounds that pop out at the user like that. Never have.
@Sean Randall
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@FreakyFwoof @cachondo @KaraLG84 The short of it is that some things are really difficult to change. As another example, we've actually had several conversations over the years about changing the name NVDA. It's not an ideal name in a lot of ways: hard for people to remember, not catchy, etc. But changing it would break the world, hahaha.
@Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@FreakyFwoof @jcsteh @cachondo @KaraLG84 We are (admittedly slowly) working on an idea to allow themes for - not only sounds, but things like gestures, braille tables and speech dictionaries: github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issue…

So, hopefully we'll be able to bring those sounds back one day - as an option for those who want them (along with the ability to change them still further if you choose)


Create a themes API · Issue #18214 · nvaccess/nvda

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. There are many cases where a user may wish to modify the UX of NVDA i.e. via custom themes. Common items proposed include: Sound profi...
GitHub
@Jamie Teh @Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Kara Goldfinch

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@KaraLG84 @cachondo @FreakyFwoof Mmm, from memory, I also specified some requirements for them; two short chords, etc. Andre also made some startup sounds, trying to honour the old ones but more modern, but I wanted a complete break from that going to something more subtle. But many users didn't like it, so here we are. :)
@Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Jamie Teh

mastodon - Link to source

x0

@jcsteh @cachondo @KaraLG84 @FreakyFwoof Especially since startup, at least, and possibly error, is loaded waaaaay before add-ons are even involved, no? Hell it might even happen before user config has been identified, and changing that would cause the start-up sound to have to be delayed, which might scare people or make them hammer it more for slower startups.
@Jamie Teh @Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to x0

mastodon - Link to source

Pitermach

@x0 @jcsteh @cachondo @KaraLG84 @FreakyFwoof The way ZDSR solves this is it looks for sounds in 2 directories. First in the program's own sounds folder, but also it looks for any sound files that you paste into your user settings directory. If it finds a sound file in your user folder, including the startup sound, it'll be used over the built-in one. I wonder if this would be viable to do for NVDA, or for things like playing the startup sound that happens before it starts looking to see where the user settings are.
@x0 @Jamie Teh @Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to x0

mastodon - Link to source

Andre Louis

@x0 @pitermach @jcsteh @cachondo @KaraLG84 On a sort of different note, to have remote access on login, there needs to be way more granularity when copying settings over. You can copy settings and all addons, or... Nothing. That seems a bit strange, especially these days. I have a 3 gig addons folder all-told so having to go and remove 99% of that after install is not going to be doable by non-power users. I'm just brainstorming here but is it just me? Did I misunderstand how that button works? Is it settings + addons or nothing? Can you *only* copy settings avoiding addons?
@Pitermach @x0 @Jamie Teh @Sean Randall @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Pitermach

mastodon - Link to source

Talon

@pitermach @x0 @jcsteh @cachondo @KaraLG84 @FreakyFwoof This would be great. I always replace the default sounds everytime NVDA updates because some sounds, particularly focus mode sound, can trigger some problems with my ears. These are things you never think about until it happens to you. Luckily replacing them is very easy, but not having to do it at all would be very nice.
@Pitermach @x0 @Jamie Teh @Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Kara Goldfinch

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@KaraLG84 @cachondo @FreakyFwoof hahaha, was just digging through GitHub and found my final comment on this:
Question: Umm, shouldn't we give another try to a different sound pack, in the
hope that something more likeable might be produced?
My answer: No alternatives have been proposed over the years that don't fail to meet the requirements in #7218 in some way. From the feedback received, there isn't even sufficient clear, common detail on exactly what might address user concerns. We can't hope to fix an issue if there isn't enough objective data about what might actually fix it. Finally, going around and around on this just isn't a good use of time given other priorities; we've already sunk a decent amount of time into this and gained a grand sum total of nothing useful. As I noted elsewhere, we are not going to consider this in the near term.
github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issue…

Changing the sound effects for NVDA · Issue #1007 · nvaccess/nvda

Reported by KevanGC on 2010-10-30 10:51 There are sounds that are played with NVDA. For example, the sounds for focus and browse modes. They work fine, but I would like to be able to change those t...
GitHub
@Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@FreakyFwoof @KaraLG84 @jcsteh @cachondo A lot of it comes down to personal preference - the hearing issue for some users was compelling, but for a lot of users, it was simply what they prefer (and yes, many users preferred the new sounds, and many preferred the old sounds - since it wasn't overwhelming one way or the other, we felt the best option was to keep the status quo until we could give users more choice.
@Jamie Teh @Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Steve

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@sclower @FreakyFwoof @KaraLG84 @cachondo To some extent, it's subjective. As I said earlier, we already tried to change this once and we got a lot of user backlash. Sometimes, you can't win, and in those cases, it's generally best just to leave it alone, especially when you don't have objective, evidence based data to back up your decision to change.
@Steve @Sean Randall @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

Mikołaj Hołysz

@FreakyFwoof @cachondo VS Code could definitely learn from that for its accessibility sounds / audio cues system. The "task completed" sound in particular feels more like beating a final boss in a video game, not something you hear every 5 seconds.

Hearing it after struggling with some non-working code for half an hour is definitely satisfying, though.

@Sean Randall @Andre Louis
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@Scott I'm guessing OneCore is still going to get laggy if you throw it a fairly long string, since OneCore can't stream in chunks, which is really damned annoying. I'm actually wondering whether it might be worth using the SAPI hack to access OneCore like we originaly considered. The downside is you can't access the faster speeds that way. With rate boost being available with SAPI5 now, that might be less of an issue, though I suspect that will be less intelligible for most people than the voice's own faster rates.
@Scott
in reply to Callum Stoneman

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@CallumStoneman It will get disabled when you update. You will need to go into NVDA's Remote Access settings to enable the (new) feature and then you should be able to use it again. Broadly similar to the old add-on, but some things may be slightly different. Here is the user guide section on it: download.nvaccess.org/releases…

NVDA 2025.1 User Guide

download.nvaccess.org
@Callum Stoneman
in reply to Majid Hussain

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@mhussain If you've got the RC installed, you're on the "beta / RC" channel, so NVDA won't update to 2025.1 (stable) but you will automatically update to the next beta we put out (eg 2025.2 Beta 1) - if you'd like to install NVDA 2025.1 (stable), you can run the launcher from either the release announcement or the download page: nvaccess.org/download/ (that will put you back on the "Stable" channel, so you won't be notified about the next beta, but you'll likely see it here first anyway!)

NV Access | Download NVDA

www.nvaccess.org
@Majid Hussain
⇧