Archive: 2018

  1. NVDA 2018.1rc2 Released for Testing

    NVDA 2018.1rc2 has just been released for testing. This is a release candidate, which means that unless any critical issues are found, this will be identical to the final 2018.1 release.

    Changes from rc1 to rc2 include:

    • NVDA will no longer cause messages in Outlook or documents in Microsoft Word to be classed as changed after only reading them. (#8038)
    • The ALVA Protocol Converter should now really work as advertised (#8047)
    • NVDA will correctly upgrade to the new Alva braille driver with out the user having to open the Braille settings dialog and choosing Alva again. (#8051)
    • NVDA again supports the Alva 640 Comfort.

  2. In-Process 23rd February 2018

    Hi everyone,

    Hasn’t February been a busy month so far? So busy, in fact, that I’m a week behind in posting In-Process!

    What has kept us busy? One reason is that last weekend, the staff and board of NV Access all got together in Brisbane to catch up on what has been happening over the past year, and plan where we are going.

    Statistics

    In considering where we are and where we are heading, here are some interesting statistics about NVDA:

    Our Top 10 download countries: India, United States, Brazil, Russian Federation, France, United Kindom, Germany, Poland, Canada, Argentina.

    We are still seeing a major spike in India, and it’s also great to see Canada in the top 10 as well!

    2017.3 was downloaded over 162,000 times with 66% due to updates, thus about 107,000 active users.

    The update server is detecting around 34,000 users per day running NVDA connected to the internet. This doesn’t account for companies and individuals who have disabled update checking, or those without access to the Internet.

    There have been a number of changes to the screen reader market recently, which has seen an increase in demand for NVDA. Our users have once again risen to the challenge, producing the “Switching from Window-Eyes to NVDA” guide, to sit next to the already popular “Switching from Jaws to NVDA” guide.

    In the recent WebAIM screen reader user survey, NVDA more than doubled its percentage of users who use it as their primary screen reader, compared to the previous year’s survey, moving to a clear second position.

    When looking at which screen reader users commonly use, nearly 2/3 of respondents commonly use NVDA.

    There are an estimated 39 million blind people around the world and an estimated 285 million blind and vision impaired people, yet anecdotally only 400,000 screen reader users. That means there is a large number of people yet to be reached. NVDA is no longer just about creating something so that more people can get access to computers. That is still important, however, current and future users are also relying on NVDA to continue to exist until it is not needed. NVDA is filling a bigger gap than ever before.

    NV Access Video

    NV Access has a new video. It is designed not only to showcase NVDA, but also the crucial need around the world that a free and open source screenreader fills. View the video on our YouTube channel.

    NVDACon – call for submissions

    Preparations are underway for this year’s NVDACon. The NVDACon International planning committee would like to invite you to submit topics for the upcoming conference. NVDACon will be held in May or June of 2018. The date and agenda will be released at a future time. If you are a business, organization or individual that is passionate about a topic related to accessibility, please submit your topic by March 17th, 2018. If you have any questions or would like to submit a topic, please contact [email protected]. For more information, please see the NVDACon website.

    NVDA 2018.1rc1

    Finally, because you know I like to keep you in suspense, the first release of NVDA for 2018 is now very close! So close, in fact, that you can download the Release Candidate build right this very minute! The release candidate is a version we release just before a new version. All going well, the final, stable version will be identical to the release candidate. The idea is that more people will try the release candidate than our usual snapshot (beta) builds. If any big problems are found, we can then quickly release a second release candidate with a fix before the final version a week or so later. So without further ado, here is the NVDA 2018.1rc1 (release candidate) announcement.

    That’s all for today. Have a great weekend, and I look forward to giving a full recap of what is new in NVDA 2018.1 next time around.

  3. NVDA 2018.1rc1 released for testing

    NVDA 2018.1rc1 has just been released for testing. This is a release candidate, which means that unless any critical issues are found, this will be identical to the final 2018.1 release.

    Highlights of this release include support for charts in Microsoft word and PowerPoint, support for new braille displays including Eurobraille and the Optelec protocol converter, improved support for Hims and Optelec braille displays, performance improvements for Mozilla Firefox 58 and higher, and much more.

  4. In-Process 1st February 2018

    Well, the first month of the year is already over, and hopefully, our werewolf followers didn’t get up to too much mischief during last night’s super-blue-blood-moon spectacular!

    Here at NV Access, we’ve been busy working on the next version of NVDA, so I thought I’d share a couple of things which are coming up in 2018.1:

    Charts in Microsoft Word

    Pie chart in Word with title “Are you looking forward to NVDA 2018.1? 80% shows “Yes”, 20% shows “Yes, but in orange” and there are unused data points for “Maybe, I mean, yes” and “Mmm, pie”

    Firstly, it is now possible to interact with charts in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint, similar to the existing support for charts in Microsoft Excel. The process varies slightly between programs, but broadly, navigate to the chart and press ENTER. When done, press ESCAPE to finish. Also, for recent Office 365 versions of Microsoft Excel, it is again possible to navigate charts using the arrow keys.

    When typing with the on-screen keyboard via touch interaction, by default you now need to double tap each key the same way you would activate any other control. If you prefer the existing “touch typing” mode where simply lifting your finger off the key is enough to activate it, enable this option in the new Touch Interaction settings dialog found in the Preferences menu.

    It is no longer necessary to explicitly tether braille to focus or review, as this will happen automatically by default. Note that automatic tethering to review will only occur when using a review cursor or object navigation command. Scrolling will not activate this new behaviour.

    In Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, NVDA no longer fails to update when Controlled Folder Access is enabled from Windows Defender Security Center.

    A heap of bug fixes, Braille improvements and other tidbits.

    There is also a slight performance improvement when rendering large amounts of content in Mozilla Firefox 58 and later. Mozilla released Firefox 58 recently, which addresses many of the problems they introduced in Firefox 57. Marco Zehe from Mozilla’s accessibility team has more information on Marco’s Accessibility Blog. He details improvements in Firefox 58, current issues and where things are headed with Firefox. It is well worth a read.

    We get queries from time to time from those interested in learning to develop for NVDA, or who just want to know the best environment to use for programming in Python. Python is the main language the majority of NVDA is written in.

    There are many tutorials on the web to help you learn Python. As with many languages, you can either use an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) or write the code in your favourite text editor. Up until recently, most IDEs were largely inaccessible. Most NVDA users who write in Python tend to use their favourite text editor. Notepad++ has been a popular choice, but even regular Notepad which comes with Windows will do the job. In the latest versions of Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft have made great progress in the accessibility of the editor, and it is now another option if you are interested in writing in an IDE. The advantage of an IDE is it can make it easier to work on a project by automating some of the tasks for you.

    If you are interested in coding for NVDA, be sure to check out our NVDA Developer Guide and the NVDA developers’ e-mail list.

    On learning to program in Python itself, if you do know of a great tutorial for those interested in learning from scratch, please do let me know and I’ll share it here in a future In-Process.

    Finally, back to the question I know you are really interested in – when is NVDA 2018.1 due out? Well, we’re about to enter translation freeze, after which, no new features will be added to 2018.1. This allows the translators to finish updating their translations in time for the final release of 2018.1. So, about the time the next In-Process comes out, in a fortnight or a few days later, the first Release Candidate for NVDA 2018.1 should be available. The final version of NVDA 2018.1 will be out a week or so after that unless any major issues are found. To help identify any potential issues early, do feel free to grab a copy of the current “Master” build from the Snapshots page, as that is very close to what the release candidate build will be like. Of course, if you do identify any issues, please do report them on our GitHub page. If you are reporting an issue specific to the snapshot build, if you could confirm whether it is specific to the latest build, something new since the last stable build, or something since you’ve updated another program, that would really help us track it down.

    Until next time, enjoy your February!

  5. NVDA In-Process 16 January 2018

    Happy New Year everyone and a warm welcome to 2018!

    Well, it’s been a month since I last wrote. In that time, the NV Access team have been very busy relaxing, spending time with loved ones and eating too much! Well, speaking for myself at least… We hope you have also enjoyed your time since our last post.

    January 2018 calendar

    January 2018 calendar

    So, there isn’t a lot of news this time around. There are a couple of things I wanted to mention briefly:

    Firstly, if you’ve written to us over the Christmas / New Year period, thank you – we love hearing from our users! If we haven’t replied yet, it’s because we only started back at work this week. We will get back to you shortly.

    Along the same lines, we’re only just starting to catch up on what’s been going on in the NVDA user’s e-mail list and GitHub. If you’ve been active in either of those forums lately, we haven’t forgotten you!

    As we head into a new year, we’d love to hear those feature ideas you’ve had over the holiday period, or reports of bugs you’ve found. Do keep reporting issues on GitHub and discussing them in the user’s e-mail list!

    Finally, while we’ve been on leave, others have been hard at work. There have been updates to many of your favourite add-ons. Companies like Microsoft have sent out updates to Windows and Office. Some of these updates were due to address various issues which have previously been reported. How are you finding them? Join the conversation in the e-mail list.

    That’s about all for this week. Do join me again towards the end of the month as we start to – already – gear up for 2018.1!