We have another beta for NVDA 2026.1. We thank Salesforce, share news from Microsoft, and we have lots more info about add-ons, both for checking if they are compatible with a new version of NVDA, and installing them.
- NVDA 2026.1 Beta 8
- Thanks to Salesforce
- Installing Add-ons
- Displaying add-ons compatible with a particular version in the web view
- More logical navigation through Word documents
NVDA 2026.1 Beta 8
Beta 8 of NVDA 2026.1 is now available for download and testing. For anyone who is interested in trying out what the next version of NVDA has to offer before it is officially released, we welcome you to download the beta and provide feedback using our GitHub issue reporting process.
Changes introduced in Beta 8
- Fixed the “Speech style” setting in Math settings being empty when using languages other than English
- Updates to translations
Changes introduced in Beta 7
- Prevented some cases of NVDA crashing on secure screens
- The empty Bangla translation has been removed
- Updates to translations
Remember you can also sign up to be notified of new betas (or just when the final release comes out).
We are getting closer to the stable release. Please do keep testing the betas and reporting any issues you find!
Thanks to Salesforce
Support for NV Access by Salesforce helps to build our capacity, it enables us to innovate; keep NVDA up to date, stable and secure. We greatly appreciate and acknowledge the generous support of Salesforce, and their commitment to supporting NV Access and NVDA and our work towards inclusion and accessibility for all. As Salesforce acknowledges: “In this digital, work-from-anywhere world, inclusion and equal access to technology are more important than ever before.”
Financial support helps us continue to provide NVDA for free, to anyone around the world who would like it. We don’t make you sign up for anything, buy a license, or watch ads. We rely on contributions from individuals and organisations around the world. If you would like to help keep NVDA free, we would welcome your financial support, no matter the amount! Or, if your organisation has something larger in mind, please feel free to contact us.
Installing Add-ons
Last fortnight we looked at some of the techniques for writing add-ons, today let’s pivot back to the final product – how do you install an add-on?
I’m glad you asked! The easiest, and recommended, way to install an add-on is via NVDA’s add-on store. There is a lot of information about the add-on store in the NVDA user guide.
Let’s run through just the steps to install an add-on below.
First, let’s open the add-on store:
- Ensure NVDA is running
- Press NVDA+n to open the NVDA menu (your NVDA key is either insert or caps lock, depending on how you have set NVDA up)
- Press t to open the tools submenu
- Press a to select “Add-on store”
The add-on store opens. If you have add-ons installed already, it opens to the “installed add-ons” tab. If you don’t have any add-ons installed, it opens to the “Available add-ons” tab. If you have not previously opened the add-on store, it will show a warning you need to accept first. Next, let’s search for an add-on:
- If needed, press control+tab to move to the “Available add-ons” page
- Press alt+s or tab to the “Search” edit
- Type what you’d like to search for. For example, “Translate” if you’d like an add-on to translate things, “ai” if you’re looking for an add-on to work with AI, or “version” if you’re looking for the add-on which tells you the current program version. (Since those are all things I’ve been asked about recently, or which have come up in the user group)
- Press tab to move to the available add-ons list
- Use the arrow keys to explore the options
- When you find one which you’d like to find out more about, press tab to move to the description
Now to install an add-on:
- Ensure the focus is on either the add-on name in the list or tab to the “Actions” button
- Press enter to open the context menu for the selected add-on. (Spacebar, applications key, shift+F10 and alt+c also work)
- Press down arrow once to select “Install”
- Press enter to install the add-on. Note the focus returns to the selected add-on in the list. The “Status” column for this add-on changes to “Downloading”. Once it finishes, the status changes to “Downloaded, pending install”
- If desired, jump back to any previous step to explore or install any other add-ons you may be interested in
- Press escape to close the dialog or tab to “OK” and press enter. Any add-ons you installed will be set up now and NVDA will prompt to restart. Once NVDA restarts, the add-ons are ready to use
Note that for some add-ons, the information in the description may be enough. For others, you may want to visit the “Homepage” to get more details on exactly how to use it. You can get to the homepage for an add-on by pressing enter on it, as if to install it, but instead choose “Homepage”.
If the homepage is the add-ons GitHub page, you can usually press “1” twice to get to the main heading which is under the table and where the instructions start.
Displaying add-ons compatible with a particular version in the web view
Firstly, a quick shout out to me, on what is possibly the longest article title I’ve ever written. Grin
While we’re looking at add-ons, and in preparation for NVDA 2026.1, how do you know if your favourite add-on is compatible with a new version of NVDA?
Firstly, we only allow compatibility to break in some older add-ons in the first (i.e. major) release of each year: NVDA 2025.1, NVDA 2026.1, etc. If you are using NVDA 2025.3.3, as most users are currently for instance, if you find an add-on which was tested with NVDA 2025.1 – it will work with 2025.3.3. Once an add-on is updated to work with NVDA 2026.1, it will work with 2026.2 and all the other 2026.x versions of NVDA we release this year.
When NVDA 2026.1 comes out, if you want to make sure your favourite add-on is compatible before updating NVDA, you can do that with the add-on store web interface. We announced the web interface for the add-on store late last year.
One of the features of the web interface is that you can set the NVDA version to aim for. This is set to the current stable version by default, but you can set it to a newer version, such as NVDA 2026.1 or an older version, such as 2024.1. As we are not yet in the Release Candidate period for 2026.1 yet, we don’t have any stable add-ons listed as compatible. There are no less than 65 add-ons with beta or dev versions compatible with 2026.1:
More logical navigation through Word documents
Earlier this year, Doug Geoffray from Microsoft shared a development he had championed, which helps make it easier to navigate Word documents. From the article:
“A new setting in Microsoft Word for Windows that allows you to use the up and down arrow keys to move through all the content in your document based on the logical reading order.
Previously, using the up and down arrow keys moved you to whatever was visually above or below your cursor, which could skip content in the reading sequence and cause you to miss important pieces of content such as lines, columns, and even pages. With the new experience, these keys better recognize and more intuitively navigate columns of text, tables, text wrapped around an image, and dropped cap letters, and when you’re in a multi-page view. Screen reader users can now be confident that they receive the same information as sighted users.”
Be sure to read the full Microsoft article for details on how to enable the new setting.
This feature was initially available in Insiders Office builds; however, it has now rolled out more widely. Note that it may not be available to everyone yet, but if you have Office 365 Version 2603 (Build 19727.20000) or later, you should have the feature.
That’s all for this week, do try out the latest NVDA 2026.1 beta 8. If you use Word, do check out the new setting there, and we’ll be back in a couple of weeks with more.