July 17, 2025 8:15 am

A long post, but everything falls into two main topics this week: The NEW user group, and the new (upcoming) NVDA version!

1. Official NVDA users email group
2. Using Google Groups
3. NVDA 2025.2 Beta now available!
4. Reporting issues with NVDA
5. Three quick tips from Noelia

Official NVDA users email group

NV Access is very pleased to introduce the OFFICIAL NVDA users email group. A community dedicated to helping people understand and use the NVDA screen reader in a friendly, safe and welcoming environment. The group is run by trusted volunteers Noelia, Derek and Rui, who have been well known in the NVDA community for many years. It is also where you will find NV Access staff, sharing information and answering questions.

Join the group at https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/g/nvda-users or email [email protected].

Links can also be found in the latest version of Basic Training for NVDA, the Get Help page on the NV Access website and the NVDA 2025.2 user guide.

Using Google Groups

Google groups is one of the most popular platforms for email groups. We wanted to highlight a couple of tips to help you get setup to receive the group messages exactly how you want them:

Using Thunderbird

Thunderbird has a bug where if reply (press control+r) is used, replies only go to the sender by default rather than the list. Using “Reply all” (press control+shift+r) will send replies to the group. There is a setting which can be changed, although the option to fix this is a little buried. Here are the steps:

1. Press Alt+t, then e twice to get to general settings and enter
2. Type config then tab to “config editor” and enter
3. Type / copy:

   mail.override_list_reply_to

4. Press tab twice to the toggle button and press spacebar to toggle it.
5. Press control+w to close the tab

Setting Archive (digest) mode

Google Groups has four modes for your subscription. These subscription options are:

• each email: you get every email sent to the group
• Digest: You get one email summarising every 25 messages sent to the group each day
• Archive: You get one email summarising every 150 messages sent to the group each day
• No email: You don’t get any emails, and can go to the group page to read / reply

Most users who do not want to receive every email will prefer “Archive” mode. One email a day of each message sent to the list that day, similar to the digest mode on other lists. To set the group to archive mode:

1. Go to: https://groups.google.com/my-groups
2. Press t to jump to the table
3. Press down arrow to move into the table
4. Press control+alt+right arrow to move to the second column, with the group name
5. Press control+alt+down arrow to move down to the “NVDA Screen reader discussion” group
6. Press control+alt+right arrow to move to the “Subscription” column
7. Press alt+down arrow to open the list of options
8. Use the down and up arrow keys to select the desired subscription, then enter to select

Google Groups automatically saves the selection.

NVDA 2025.2 Beta now available!

While the 2025.1 release is still warm, we’re already into the beta period for NVDA 2025.2! In fact, we’re up to Beta 3 already!

NVDA 2025.2 includes improvements in Windows 11, browse mode, and Microsoft Word.

In browse mode, quick navigation keys for headings 7 through 9 have been added. The Elements List and Find dialogs no longer cause application profiles to be deactivated. In Microsoft Edge, notifications like “loading complete” no longer stop say all.

In Microsoft Word, when using the shortcuts to switch to page view or outline view, the new view is now reported. When UIA is enabled, redundant table end markers are no longer brailled when the cursor is in a table cell.

On Windows 11, NVDA will no longer announce emoji panel items twice while browsing them. Performance and reliability in the Start Menu on Windows 11 24H2 has been improved. On Windows 11 24H2 and newer, window state will be announced when resizing windows with `Windows+arrow` keys. Support has also been added for Windows 11 Voice Access.

Options have been added to report the language of the text being read, and report when the language is not supported by the current synthesizer.

Support for the NLS eReader Zoomax braille display has been added. Support for cursor routing with the point and click action on the Humanware Monarch has been added.

LibLouis has been updated, adding new Biblical Hebrew, Russian 6 dot computer braille and Thai Grade 2 braille tables. eSpeak NG has been updated, adding support for Aromanian, Crimean Tatar, Mongolian, and Pashto.

There have also been a number of other fixes and improvements, including to mouse and touch interaction, Windows 11 Notepad, and Google Chrome.

Read the full details and download from the NVDA 2025.2 Beta 3 release announcement.

Reporting issues with NVDA

We use GitHub to keep track of code and issues in NVDA. Issues might be bugs or ideas for new features. This part of GitHub is quite useable without any knowledge of code. While you need an account to create or comment on issues, GitHub is used by many other projects, so it is quite flexible. To sign up for a GitHub account, go to: https://github.com/ then tab to “Sign up” and press enter. The form asks for your email address, a password, a username, your country and whether you would like to receive occasional product emails from GitHub. Like most services, it will send you an email you need to respond to in order to join.

Searching for an issue

Once you are signed up, you can report your first NVDA issue. First, you’ll want to check to see if anyone else has already reported it:

1. Head to: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues (it’s worth bookmarking this page)
2. Press e to jump to the “Search issues edit field”
3. Press enter to go into focus mode and move the caret into the field

The field already has some text which we will leave there. “is:issue” means we are searching for an issue (as opposed to something else, such as a pull request). “state:open” indicates we are looking for one which is open. Issues are closed when they are resolved, either by having a pull request merged which fixes the issue, or because they are a duplicate of another issue or are not something we can fix.

4. Type what you would like to search for. Press enter to run the search
5. The search results are presented in a list. There is a “Search results” heading level 2 above the list. Each result is at heading level 3. Press 3 to move through the list of results
6. Press enter on any result which sounds similar to your issue

Once you have opened a particular issue, the focus is on the heading. Press h again to jump to the start of the issue, which lists the creator and the time it was created. Read down from here to read the description, and then any replies. At the bottom is an edit box where you can post a reply yourself. This is really useful if you have extra information about an issue. For instance, if the issue was reported with a particular version of NVDA or Windows and you can confirm it still happens with a later version. Perhaps a question has been asked about the issue, and you can provide more information to help answer that question about the issue.

Creating a new issue

If you have read through any possibly related issues and none match the problem you are having, or the suggestion you would like to make, you can create a new issue. To do this:

1. Here is a direct link to the new issue templates. Alternatively, from the issues section of GitHub, activate the “New issue” button
2. Press tab to move through the issue types
3. Press enter on the one you would like to create. The main two you will need are “Bug report” (something isn’t working as it should) and “Feature request” (please add something new to NVDA)
4. The focus starts on the “Title” edit field. Type a meaningful name (see tips after the steps)
5. Press tab three times to get to the description field
6. Press enter to put NVDA in focus mode to type the description. The field already contains text which includes instructions about the information required. Press the down arrow to move through this information
7. The description is formatted with Markdown. Each “heading” in the description starts with the number or hash sign (#). Read each heading, then down arrow once below it, and type the information requested. For instance, for a bug report, there are headings for:
   • Steps to reproduce (Give detailed, step by step steps for someone to recreate the issue – like these steps)
   • Actual behaviour (what happens? Please quote any error message or describe what is read (or not read)
   • Expected behaviour (what do you expect should happen instead?)
   • NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments
   • Then various details about your system, NVDA version, other programs in use, etc
8. Once finished, press control+enter to create the issue

Subscribing to an issue

Once you have created an issue, you are also “subscribed” to it. This means, you will be notified of any comments or updates to the issue. This is one of the main reasons it is important to create your own issues. Developers working on an issue may have questions only someone who can replicate the issue can answer. Or they may create a “try” build of NVDA with a possible fix. In this case, they will need someone who is experiencing the issue to try that build to confirm if it does in fact resolve the issue. In some cases, you can write to NV Access, and we may be able to create an issue for you, however it is important that you follow the progress of any issues you are interested in. Where you haven’t created an issue but want to follow it, you can “Subscribe” to it. To subscribe to an issue:

1. Open the issue you are interested in, either from a direct link given to you, or by Searching for an issue
2. Press NVDA+f7 to open NVDA’s elements list
3. Press alt+b to show the buttons on the page
4. Press tab to move to the list of buttons
5. Press s until NVDA reports “Subscribe”
6. Press enter to activate the subscribe button

GitHub also has its own single key keystrokes. If you would like to use these, you can disable NVDA’s single letter navigation off for the current document with NVDA+shift+spacebar.

Giving your issue a meaningful title

The title should be short, but also convey the key problem, any specific program it occurs in or feature of NVDA. If the issue occurs with an alpha, beta, or Release Candidate build of NVDA, and NOT the previous stable version, this is really important to include. Here are some titles of issues which have been fixed in NVDA 2025.2 and closed:

• Can’t review/spell text of accessible names applied with aria-label/labelledby in focus mode
• NVDA+Up fails to read or spell many controls and lines in Google Chrome
• Add option to report when switching languages (and possibly to report when a language is not supported)
• Remote: Gesture to Mute/Unmute Speech Should Be Properly Notified When No Remote Session is Connected

It is worth noting, these are all P3, P4 or P5 issues. If you’re not sure what that means, stay tuned, as next time, we will have a bit more of a look at the process after an issue is created.

Three quick tips from Noelia

Noelia has been a long time user and advocate of NVDA. She sent us a short testimonial several years ago which we shared in Spanish. She is very active in the community, creating add-ons, running one of the Spanish user groups, and now, one of the moderators of the Official NVDA users email group. Recently, in the user group, Noelia shared three quick tips for NVDA. This sparked a thread with other keystrokes users find helpful, so do check that out, and join in and share YOUR favourite keystrokes. To get you thinking, here are the three quick keystrokes Noelia shared as well worth knowing:

1. Read where the focus is pressing NVDA+tab. The focus can receive input like keys pressed on the keyboard
2. Read the Window title pressing NVDA+t. This is useful to know what’s the current application, document etc
3. Press NVDA+b to read the controls available on the current Window

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back with more as we get closer to the NVDA 2025.2 release. For now, please try out the beta, and please do join the new, official NVDA users email group!