The Projects that We Support
On this page you will find information and links to the sites of the different projects that we support. Many of these sites will have links to blogs, wikis, mailing lists and other resources.
As we do not own or run the different projects, we are not able to answer any specific questions about any of the projects that you may have. If you have a particular question about one or more of the projects, please direct these to the project owners or the project community.
NVDA - NonVisual Desktop Access
NVDA, or NonVisual Desktop Access, is the first completely free and open-source screen reader for the Windows Operating System, and was the reason why the idea of NV Access was started. NVDA came about because its creator Michael Curran was frustrated about the non-existence of a free and open-source screen reader for Windows. "I know that there are people around who can write better code than me, but nobody is doing it". So, in early 2006 he left his second year of a bachelor of computer science to attempt to write one. He soon made rapid progress and in late December, he was able to dispense with his usual commercial screen reader and depend solely on NVDA as his only computer access tool.
Another blind programmer and long time friend, James Teh, also contributed large amounts of code in the initial NVDA structure, and is now one of the core developers, working on NVDA whenever he has free time from his job. As well as James, there are also a number of other interested programmers, designers and translators who watch the development of NVDA closely via the email lists and contribute where they can.
NVDA works with Windows XP and Vista and can be run directly off a USB thumb drive or CD. Currently, it can also be used in 11 different languages. The NVDA homepage can be found at: http://www.nvda-project.org.