Access Point: An NV Access WSB Technology Series
Empowering computer access through innovation and education.
NV Access is proud to partner with World Services for the Blind on Access Point, a collaborative technology series focused on advancing computer access for people who are blind or visually impaired.
This series brings together the team behind NVDA and WSB’s Assistive Technology instructors to share the latest updates, practical strategies, and real-world applications that support greater independence in education, employment, and daily life. Released alongside NVDA updates, Access Point highlights new features, accessibility tools, and evolving approaches that help users get the most out of their technology.
By combining innovation with hands-on instruction, this partnership offers a unique look at both the development of accessible technology and the ways it is used in real settings every day. Each session is designed to provide practical demonstrations, helpful discussion, and guidance for professionals, educators, students, and users around the world.
Below, you will find prerecorded Access Point videos featuring insights from NV Access and WSB’s Assistive Technology team. These sessions are designed to help you stay current, build confidence, and discover new ways to improve access through technology.
Access Point Webinar 1 (NVDA 2026.1):
Transcript:
[James Boreham]
Hello, and welcome to the first Access Point Webinar. NV Access and World Services for the blind are collaborating to provide webinars that provide an overview of what is in each NVDA release. The webinars will be aligned with the timing of each NVDA release. Note that NVDA is released roughly three to four times a year.I’m James Boreham, the General Manager of NV Access. We also have joining us some of the team members.
[Quentin Christensen]
Hi everyone. I’m Quentin Christensen, the Training and Support Manager for NV Access.[Heather Miller]
Hello, my name is Heather Miller and I’m the Director of Education and Training at World Services for the Blind.[Megan Hudgens]
Hi, I’m Megan Hudgens. I am an Assistive Technology Instructor at World Services for the Blind.[James Boreham]
All right, thank you everyone. Just to give you a brief overview of NV Access and NVDA. NV Access is an Australian-based charity. We’ve been operating for about 20 years. NV Access was founded to support the development and distribution of the free and open-source screen reader NVDA.NV Access has the vision and mission to make sure that everyone has equal and open access to technology. And that’s particularly blind and low-vision people. We want to make sure that people have equal access to technology, because technology is so important in our daily lives these days. so that blind and low-vision people have access to education, to work, and independence through equal open access to technology. On that basis, we developed and distribute the free and open-source screen reader NVDA.
NVDA is screen reading software that works with the Windows operating system. It enables blind and low-vision people to use a computer similar to what a sighted person can. It works with email, documents, and the internet. to enable a blind or low-vision person to use the computer either via audio or a refreshable braille display. What it does is convert what a sighted person sees on a computer screen to audio and braille so that a blind or low-vision person can use a computer.
We are committed to making sure that the screen reader NVDA is free and open source. We make it free so that no one has to pay extra to use a computer. Being open source means we have a system and process whereby blind and low-vision people can contribute to the NVDA software. We have blind and low-vision staff who develop, design, and work on NVDA. NV Access was founded by blind software engineers Michael Curran and Jamie Teh. That is at the heart of everything we do: software for and by the blind.
We have a very active community. A large number of contributors are blind and low vision themselves, and they contribute to NVDA. to make sure that it meets the needs of our users. NVDA is now used all around the world. It is used in 175 different countries, we have hundreds of thousands of users. and NVDA has been translated into 55 different languages. We are committed to making sure that NVDA is around for the long term. and that it continues to remain free and open source. I’ll now pass to Heather for a brief overview of World Services for the Blind.
[Heather Miller]
Thank you very much, and thank you for telling us all about NV Access and NVDA. At World Services for the Blind, we provide independent living skills. and career training for blind adults all over the United States and across the world. World Services for the Blind has been around since 1947, so we’re coming up on 80 years of operation. Our mission has stayed the same throughout those 80 years. and that’s a mission of sustainable independence.We understand that that means that people need to not only have access to the tools they need to be independent and successful, but also to know how to use those tools. That’s what we focus on at WSB. Our goal is to get people into the workforce, into college. and as independent as they possibly can be.
We are excited to be partnering with NV Access for this webinar series in the upcoming months, because NVDA is a really important tool that our clients use every day. Because it is a free and open-source screen reader, there are no financial costs involved and anybody can access it from anywhere. And that’s really important in maintaining independence and accessing information. We’re excited to help NV Access bring this information to users here in the US, and help educate users on how they can best use this tool to help them achieve their goals and their day-to-day needs.
At World Services for the Blind, we focus heavily on assistive technology training, both fundamentals training and the level of training needed to actually teach assistive technology. I’ll let Megan tell you a little bit about our Assistive Technology Instructor Program, and how we incorporate the use of NVDA into that program.
[Megan Hudgens]
So The Assistive Technology Instructor Program is literally teaching people how to teach assistive technology to other blind people. NVDA is one of over a dozen modules that we cover, and it includes everything from the basics of file management and document navigation to complex object navigation.Everyone goes through the entire NVDA training book in order to learn, and there are recordings that have been made they listen to while following along with what they are reading. At the end, they all sit for the NVDA Expert Certification Exam. And we now have many NVDA experts because of this training that they’re getting.
[Heather Miller]
Thanks, Megan. Again, we’re really excited to partner with NV Access in bringing the information contained in this webinar and in upcoming webinars, to people all over the United States who listen to our webinars, and we’re looking forward to seeing where this partnership can grow in the future.So, thanks James and Quentin for joining us today.
[James Boreham]
Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity for the collaboration and reinforce that we’re available for everyone around the world. The content we touch on today regarding the NVDA release 2026.1 applies to all NVDA users wherever they are located, thank you. Quentin, I’ll pass over to you now to just give us an update. and give us an overview of what’s in the NVDA release 2026.1.[Quentin Christensen]
Thanks James and everyone. Before that, I thought I’d have a very quick look at 2025. One of the big things we built into NVDA was we built NVDA Remote into the core program itself. Previously, it had been available for a number of years as an add-on, a very popular add-on. It lets you control another computer that’s also running NVDA.We made a lot of major updates to the add-on store. So, add-ons can automatically update now; you can also sort the add-on list.
We also improved support for math in PDF files, and we’ve got more on math coming up in 2026.1. We added support for Windows 11 Voice Access, so you can dictate commands to your computer. It’s one of those things that we’ve updated, in with Microsoft periodically changing. It’s been called various things from Windows Dictation and had a couple of other names that I’ve forgotten off the top of my head.
We also added support for the NLS E-Reader Zoom Max braille display. We had already supported the HumanWare NLS E-Reader, so these are the two main one that the National Library Service have been distributing. So we support both of those out of the box now. Good, so now moving toward NVDA 2026.1, I thought I’d give a little bit of detail on the timeline of how we update NVDA. James mentioned that we update NVDA three to four times per year. The first release of the year — such as NVDA 2025.1, 2026.1, 2027.1 and so on, is a release which incorporates many of the fundamental updates like upgrading to a new major version of Python, or, in this case, migrating our code from 32-bit to 64-bit, and big things like that.
As such, this release is often a little later in the year. So, May in this case, and often do have more betas. This time around, we had a new beta every week or two during that cycle. After the last beta, we have what we call a translation string freeze. That is a two-week period where we don’t update any of the messages that NVDA presents, which gives translators a chance to update their translations in time for the release. We then incorporate those into the release candidate. If any major issues arise, we may have multiple release candidate builds. Otherwise, we go directly to the stable release: NVDA 2026.1.
For every release throughout the year after that, we actually bring out the first beta one to two weeks after the stable build. One to two weeks after NVDA 2026.1 comes out, the first beta of 2026.2 comes out. That can seem fast, particularly if you’ve been following through all the betas of 2026.1. But in fact, after that beta of any comes out we’re already starting to work on the following release. Aside from any issues found in the betas, we’re planning for the next release. So, what is coming in 2026.1? Previously, I mentioned that we’re moving our code from 32-bit to 64-bit. So one big change is that 32-bit Windows is no longer supported, and Windows 10 on ARM is also no longer supported, as well as Windows 8.1.
Windows 10 is now the minimum version for NVDA. We recommend updating to Windows 11 if you can, but where that isn’t possible, and we know it isn’t for everybody, ideally try to update to the latest version of Windows 10, which is 22H2.
Remember as well, NVDA doesn’t expire or time out. If you are on a PC that hits one of those restrictions and can’t do anything about it, NVDA 2025.3.3 is the current stable version and that will continue to work. It won’t nag you. It will let you know there’s a new version, but it won’t constantly nag you or stop working or anything like that.
Another thing is that MathPlayer is no longer supported, which brings us to the start of the highlights for NVDA 2026.1. The first one is that we’ve built support for reading math content with MathCAT. This has been a popular option for reading math for a couple of years. We actually went to research presentation from a university which I have forgotten so I do apologise, about various ways of reading math content with a screen reader. The best combination was MathCAT with NVDA, so we’re pleased to now bring that directly into NVDA itself.
We’ve got a number of improvements to speech. Spelling and grammar errors can now be reported with a sound instead of speech when reading. You can also configure NVDA to automatically “say all” after successfully recognizing content. So using OCR, for instance, you press NVDA+R on say a PDF, it recognizes the content, and instead of manually reading it yourself, NVDA can automatically go straight into “say all”.
NVDA no longer reports the language being read as unsupported when the synthesizer supports the language but not the specific dialect. For example, if you have a document declared as English UK but only have an English US voice installed.
NVDA now also supports 64-bit SAPI5 voices. If you look at the synthesizer options, as well as eSpeak and OneCore, you’ll now find both 32-bit and 64-bit SAPI5 voices as options.
For those who previously tried NVDA quite a while ago, and didn’t like the robotic eSpeak voice, we use Windows OneCore voices as the default now, which is the same voice Narrator has been using. And yes, now you’ll find both 32-bit and 64-bit SAPI 5 voices as options as well.
We’ve improved Braille support, so it now continues to work when switching to a secure screen like the sign-in screen, or the User Account Control dialog when installing software.
When using NVDA Remote, NVDA messages from your local computer are now shown in braille when you’re controlling another computer. Spelling and grammar errors, as well as the number of items in a list in browse mode can now also be shown in braille. And some of the other braille bug fixes include fixes in Microsoft Outlook and LibreOffice Writer, as well as other things there.
In Browse mode in web browsers, NVDA no longer treats controls with zero width or height as invisible. That may make it possible to read and access previously inaccessible screen-reader-only content on some websites which developers had set zero width or height so it wasn’t visible and we also ignored it. So content is now going to be more accessible, and I’ve heard from several developers and consultants that this change will improve accessibility for websites they already work with so that’s good.
Malformed HTML no longer prevents NVDA from reading content in Chrome or other Chromium based browsers.
The browse mode highlighter now appears on content recognition results. such as in Windows OCR.
In Microsoft Word, unassigned quick navigation commands to jump to references have been added and are now shown in the Elements List when you press NVDA+F7.
It is now also possible to view virus scan results for an add-on directly from the add-on store. We have already been doing virus scanning using VirusTotal for add-ons for quite some time, and now users can view those results from within the add-on store itself. For add-ons that include one, users can also view the change log. so you can see what’s new with that add-on in the latest version. The reliability of background add-on updates has also been improved.
We have created a new Privacy and Security category for NVDA’s settings dialog. We’ve moved the logging level and “allow NV Access to gather NVDA usage statistics” setting. from the General category into this new Privacy and Security category. We’ve also moved screen curtain settings from the Vision category into the Privacy and Security category. And on screen curtain, the screen curtain, settings are now configuration profile independent, so you can change them for different configuration profiles.
And a few translation updates: The NVDA interface is now translated into Cambodian. Unicode CLDR and eSpeak NG have also been updated. We’ve added braille tables for English Grade 3, Japanese Rakuten Kanji, and Macedonian uncontracted braille. There are improvements for Biblical Hebrew, Unified English Braille, Greek International, Hungarian, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Slovakian braille tables. Emoji localization for Luxembourgish has also been added.
There have been many other bug fixes and improvements, and that is what is in NVDA 2026.1. You can download it from NV Access. NV Access as the organization oversees and manages NVDA development and distribution.
We have a wonderful community around the world who contribute to NVDA. Many of our contributions come from the community, and we really appreciate that. And that is all basically funnelled through NV Access, who ensure the quality and security of everything and then we distribution NVDA from our website NVAccess.org, so you can download the latest version of NVDA from there.
And I mentioned previously those betas of new versions as they come out, there’s also announcements of those on our website. You can also subscribe via email to get notifications of new versions, betas, regular blog posts, and organizational information at NVAccess.org/Newsletter.
NVDA itself will also prompt you to update when there is a new version out. So, keep a lookout for that. And let’s see. what else we’ve got. NVDA comes with quite a comprehensive user guide. One addition we’ve made in recent years is a Quick Start Guide near the beginning of the user guide, there up at the start, there’s a quick start guide which walks you through some of the settings that you’ll want, whether you’re a new screen reader user entirely, or coming from another screen reader.
If you are coming from other screen readers, we also have resources for those users on our website. Also on our website we have our training material and support that you can purchase from our shop. “Basic Training for NVDA” is the main training module. And Heather mentioned that WSB goes through that training in their programs. So if you are a WSB client or considering becoming one, do get in touch with them. Otherwise, you can also obtain those materials directly from us at NVAccess.org.
I thought I would also give you an early preview of what is coming in NVDA 2026.2. We’ll have more on all of this in our next webinar, but for now, some of the highlights that are coming up.
One of the big updates for low-vision users is a built-in screen magnifier. So that is exciting. We’ve got a new command, NVDA+X, to repeat the last spoken information. which we know has been a long-requested feature of NVDA. and it is currently available in several add-ons, such as the Speech History add-on, but now NVDA+X is coming directly into NVDA itself to give you that last spoken utterance that NVDA has spoken.
We’ve added the ability to automatically scroll the braille display.
We’ve added touch-based navigation of browse mode objects for touchscreens.
Custom dictionaries are another thing, and we’ve got lots of fixes. fixes for Input Help, visual highlighting, WhatsApp, Firefox, Word, JetBrains IDEs, and many more.
We’ll have more details on those in our next webinar. And, yes, thank you very much.
[Heather Miller]
All of us at World Services for the Blind would like to thank you for joining us today, as well. And thank James and Quentin from NV Access for all of this great information. If you would like to find out what other resources are available to you, you can visit our website at wsblind.org. We have information there about all our training programs, as well as a resource page with information that may be relevant for anyone who is going through vision loss. or who knows somebody experiencing vision loss.So, again, thank you for joining us today, and we look forward to our next webinar.