We have another new release! But that’s not all, there’s a lot in this week’s In-Process – including a special Black Friday sale you can take advantage of right now! So let’s jump in:
- NVDA 2025.3.2
- Statewide Vision Resource Centre
- BLACK FRIDAY SALE on Certification
- Profiles Follow-up
- Add-on Store Web Interface
- Featured Add-ons
NVDA 2025.3.2
NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2025.3.2 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to NVDA 2025.3.2.
This is a patch release to fix a security issue.
Statewide Vision Resource Centre
Last week, Sascha and Quentin visited Statewide Vision Resource Centre for their annual Tech Fest. As well as a valuable opportunity for engaging with students and teachers, it is also a good opportunity to catch up with some of our friends in the industry.
Here is a picture of Quentin with Elise Lonsdale of Data Australasia at SVRC (thanks to Elise for the photo). Elise is a user of the technology herself. We really love to see members of the community getting out there and leading the way with their own businesses like Data Australasia!
BLACK FRIDAY SALE on Certification
Are you a student, or getting started in your career? One great option is talking with people like Elise, who can definitely help and give advice. Another thing you can do to demonstrate your proficiency with your technology is to become an NVDA Certified Expert. The exam is online, takes about an hour and passing it definitely demonstrates a high proficiency with not only NVDA, but Windows in general.
While the exam is free to sit, once you pass, purchasing the exam gets you a professional certificate you can print, AND listing on our page as an NVDA Certified Expert.
And there’s never been a better time to do it, as right now, we’re offering a Black Friday special – 10% discount on the certification! It’s applied automatically, so you don’t need to do anything, except purchase before the 8th December! Did you know that if you’ve purchased the certification previously (eg the 2022 version), you can upgrade to the 2025 certification for half price – and yes, you too get an extra 10% off that! Just ensure you are logged in with the same account you previously purchased your earlier certificate with.
If you’ve sat the certification in the last few months and been contemplating whether to purchase the certificate, you can take advantage of this special (but please note, if you sit the exam now, but wait until after the sale to purchase, you’ll miss out on the discount)!
NVDA Expert Certification is a great tool for anyone to show prospective employers. For those working in user support, accessibility, or IT in general, the certification is a demonstration that you know your way around the NVDA screen reader efficiently. We would love to have you listed on our page. I look forward to sending out your personalised certificate! Don’t forget the sale is on until the 8th December!
Profiles Follow-up
Last edition, we covered how to use manual configuration profiles. Users were keen to engage with us on social media to share how they use configuration profiles. Some of the interesting ways people use profiles include:
- Running coding demos at a slower speech rate
- Having all HTML elements on for accessibility testing
- Having fewer HTML elements read and faster speech rate when reading for pleasure
- Profiles to change languages or voices
- Additional symbol pronunciation for coding
- Proof reading with more symbol pronunciation and punctuation
- Enabling visual highlight and slowing speech when demonstrating NVDA
- Profiles for specific apps
- Louder voice in audio apps like Spotify
- Changing Braille display behaviour for different apps
Some of these used application profiles which automatically toggle when the focus is in that application. These are a really simple, powerful way to customise your experience.
Add-on Store Web Interface
NVDA’s add-on store is available from the tools menu of NVDA itself. Press NVDA+n, then t for tools, then a for add-on store. That is generally the best way to access it, as you can quickly and easily manage add-ons in your own copy of NVDA.
Now, however, NV Access is pleased to offer a new way to browse the list of available add-ons for NVDA: https://addonstore.nvaccess.org/
Having a web interface for the store makes several things possible, particularly:
- Sharing links to interesting add-ons with others
- Providing a single point to search add-ons even without NVDA installed
How will you use the add-on store’s web interface? Do continue the conversation in the official NVDA user group, or social media.
So, from now on, when we feature add-ons here in the blog, we can include a link to them so you can find out all the information before you download it. Speaking of featured add-ons…
Featured Add-ons
This week, I thought I’d share a couple of featured add-ons, since they tie into the configuration profile theme:
“Custom Browse Mode”
This add-on “Activates or deactivates profiles depending on browse mode state.” So, you can have a profile for when NVDA is in browse mode, and one for when NVDA is in focus mode. (Browse mode is for reading, so you can use single letter navigation keys etc. Focus mode is when you want to type data – in a form on the web, or the default state in Microsoft Word, for instance).
You can find this add-on in the add-on store in NVDA, or the Custom Browse Mode add-on page via the web interface.
“Readonly Profiles”
This add-on turns off saving profiles automatically. By default, when you have a profile active – either from being in a program with a profile associated with it, or by using a keystroke or the dialog to manually activate a profile, any changes you make to NVDA’s settings are saved to that profile. That means, if you increase the speech rate, or change the punctuation level, which will be associated with that particular profile. For users who are aware of this, and plan when to do their configuration changes for this, it works well. For users who didn’t realise this would happen, it can be frustrating. When using this add-on, you’ll want to press NVDA+shift+p to save changes to the most recent profile.
You can find the Readonly Profiles add-on in the add-on store, or via the Readonly Profiles add-on page via the web interface.
That’s all for this week. We’ll have one more update before the end of the year. Your dedicated NV Access team are taking leave at various times across the holiday season -so we’ll endeavour to reply to any queries in a timely manner, but some things may take a little longer than usual. Please do download NVDA 2025.3.2, feel encouraged to take advantage of the Black Friday certification sale, and join in the NVDA community.