Hello and welcome to another In-Process. This week’s highlights include lots of new features heading into our snapshot builds. Plus, a little piece of Hollywood for you.
To start off, ARIA work continues apace. ARIA-Placeholder is now in “master” builds. ARIA-Grids with virtual coordinates is next. This has taken a bit more time than anticipated, but still moving forward.
Jamie has been investigating the inbuilt OCR functionality in Windows 10. His hard work (expertly reviewed by Reef) is now incubating in Next snapshot builds. For Windows 10 users, it behaves the same as the current add-on. Press NVDA+r to run OCR on an otherwise inaccessible object, such as an image. A new NVDA Preferences menu item, Windows 10 OCR lets you select the OCR language.
Contracted Braille input has now graduated to Master. We know this feature has been highly anticipated for many users. If that is you, now could be a great time to investigate our snapshot builds.
Also in Master is the latest update to the eSpeak NG voice. This should fix clipping issues for some users where words were being cut off.
The Word certification is now almost three-quarters written. Be sure to look out for the question about speedboats once it’s available!
Finally, we’ve encountered a problem with our shop architecture. If you are creating a new account to buy something, the drop-down fields for country and state do work but don’t read. The workaround is:
1. Navigate to the particular combo box.
2. Press enter, spacebar or alt+down arrow to open the drop-down list.
3. Ignoring what NVDA reports, type as much of the country or state that it will be unique. “Cana” will select the country Canada, “new y” will select the U.S. state of New York, etc.
4. Press ENTER to accept. NVDA will read the selected name.
5. If correct, press TAB to move on, otherwise, return to step 2.
A random bit of trivia to end this edition of In-Process. Today marks the 94th anniversary of the dedication of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. From 1923 to 1949 the sign actually read “Hollywoodland”.