We’ve got a bumper edition for you this week, with new content for just about everone!
- Accessibility Testing with NVDA
- NV Access Survey
- New Help Options for NVDA Users
- Help for Low Vision Users
- Free Sample Accessibility Testing with NVDA
- NVDA 2026.3 Beta 5
Accessibility Testing with NVDA
NV Access is very pleased to announce the release of a new training package. Accessibility Testing with NVDA is designed for people using NVDA to test apps and websites for accessibility.
This Accessibility Testing with NVDA package includes:
- A training module with over 60 topics in nine sections
- Getting Started
- Setting up NVDA
- Reading information
- Visual Options
- Keyboard navigation
- Navigating content with NVDA
- Working with elements
- Testing with a screen reader
- Reporting Issues
- A printable NVDA Reference Sheet, with the commands most useful for accessibility testing
- A printable guide to writing accessible content on a single, printable sheet for easy consultation
- A list of NV Access and external resources and links to further your knowledge
- A WCAG 2.2 Reference with tips on testing many of the criteria with NVDA
- A JPG Badge you can proudly display in your email, or on your website or elsewhere to indicate your support
The purchase price of the module is A$250 (+GST for Australian buyers). Not only do you get a wealth of accessibility testing information, the cost of this package also supports the work of NV Access and helps continue our ability to provide the NVDA screen reading software free of charge.
Please note that this package is useable by both sighted and screen reader users. It is aimed at professionals wanting to test websites, documents and programs for accessibility. If you would like to learn to use NVDA from scratch as a blind or low vision screen reader user, please first consider “Basic Training for NVDA” or the “NVDA Productivity Bundle“.
The Accessibility Testing with NVDA module is designed to teach you to incorporate NVDA into your accessibility testing workflow. It is not intended to replace dedicated accessibility testing tools which can give specific information about testing criteria and compliance etc. If you would like more formal training specifically in web accessibility, we recommend Learn.Intopia.digital. Intopia provided feedback on the web accessibility components of this material.
Please head to Accessibility Testing with NVDA to read more and purchase the new package.
Cover image of “Accessibility Testing with NVDA”
NV Access Survey
The NVDA Satisfaction Survey 2026 is open, but only until early next week.
We are always interested in understanding the satisfaction of our NVDA users, what is important to you & what we can do more effectively. The survey is anonymous & we encourage you to leave comments in your response.
We’re interested in hearing from as many people as possible, so please feel free to pass this on to others.
The survey is short, only three questions – we deliberately do that in order to make it less onerous to fill out. The rating is a simple, and industry standard metric (a “net promoter score”) we can use to benchmark broadly how well we are doing compared to previous years. We leave room for you to add your own thoughts, so you can give feedback on that one specific point on your mind. If you want a response, please do include your email address as we don’t otherwise collect contact details.
We do sometimes get questions like “It would be great if NVDA had feature X” and it’s frustrating to not be able to reply, especially when NVDA does in fact have feature X, but we have no way to reach the person to share that with them. We have also been asked “Why don’t you ask more questions about X, Y, or Z?” – which is a great question. This survey is designed to collect feedback on everything overall, and we try to keep it fairly consistent from year to year. We do conduct specific surveys from time to time, both more formally, and occasionally just a simple question on Mastodon asking, “What do you think about …”. We like to think we are approachable and easy to get in contact with, so do please always reach out if there is something you’d like to give feedback on or to ask.
Please do head over to https://www.nvaccess.org/survey2026 and fill out the survey if you haven’t already.
New Help Options for NVDA Users
We are always looking for ways to help users and make more information available, and easy to find. For many years, the navbar of the NV Access website has had a “Get Help” option. This has linked to a single page of really useful information for NVDA users, including the training material, user groups, how to report an issue or get extra voices, and an FAQ. Now, we have expanded it to a menu. The first item lets you get help for “NVDA Users” and is the original “Get Help” item.
There are also several new options, which are covered below:
Help for Low Vision Users
With the release of the magnifier in NVDA 2026.2, it seemed a good time to collate some of the features and settings in NVDA which can be useful for low vision users. The way low vision users will have NVDA setup may be different to how a totally blind user who does not use the screen may have it setup. This “Get Help for Low Vision Users” page includes information about:
- The magnifier: including a demo video, list of keystrokes, and link to the comparison with Windows Magnifier we did here in In-Process.
- Visual Highlighter: How to turn it on and just what the different colours mean.
- How to reduce speech: Turning on or off individual elements, or adjusting the speech mode overall.
- Working on the Web: Tips for navigating web pages, and copying information from the web.
- Other Windows Settings: Suggestions for other Windows settings which can be useful for low vision users.
Free Sample Accessibility Testing with NVDA
To go with the brand-new Accessibility Testing with NVDA package, we have made a free sample of the material available. This extensive sample is full of web accessibility tips and tricks with the world’s favourite free screen reader, and is still only a small taste of the full product.
Do check out the Accessibility Testing with NVDA sample page in the new revamped “Get Help” menu. If you find it useful, you will find even more in the full Accessibility Testing with NVDA package, plus you will be supporting us to keep NVDA available for free to everyone who can use it.
Once again, our thanks to Intopia.Digital for their ongoing support of NV Access.
NVDA 2026.3 Beta 5
Finally, this week, we’re now up to Beta 5 of NVDA 2026.3. Last In-Process we were up to Beta 2, so here’s what’s been in the latest three updates:
Changes introduced in Beta 5:
- Updates to translations
- Added bug fix for NVDA failing to start on Windows versions older than Windows 10 1903
Changes introduced in Beta 4:
- Updates to translations
- Added bug fix for lag in the Add-on Store when searching using Chinese characters
- Minor documentation changes
Changes introduced in Beta 3:
- Updates to translations
- Reverted bug fix to terminals, meaning NVDA may freeze again when substantial amounts of text are dumped to the screen. This is due to the bug fix not working correctly
- Prevented Magnifier crash recovery from flashing to reduce seizure risk
That’s all for this week. It’s not often the latest beta gets bumped to the SIXTH article in the blog! That by no means reflects on its value though – Please do try NVDA 2026.3 Beta 5 if you haven’t already. If you do any web accessibility work, please do check out the new Accessibility Testing with NVDA Package. It will be around release time for NVDA 2026.3 by next edition, so we’ll have more on the new version. And we’ll also cover a bit more for our low vision users as well.