There’s a lot to cover this time as we approach the end of February. Lucky we have an extra day or I likely wouldn’t have got this out until next month!
Strategy planning
Hello from Melbourne! This edition of In-Process comes to you live from the 2024 NV Access strategy day. This in-person session is held once a year. It is a great chance for us to meet face to face as staff, and also to catch up with the NV Access board of directors.
We talk about broader issues like the general direction we want to go in with NV Access or new funding opportunities,. It doesn’t necessarily drill down to planning for specific NVDA features. So we won’t suddenly change NVDA 2024.1, for instance. The only impact on our work in the short term is that we’re all out of the office today and tomorrow so responses to queries may be slightly delayed.
NVDA 2024.1 Beta 10
We are getting much closer to the release of NVDA 2024.1. Since last In-Process, we released Betas 8 and 9 but pulled them fairly quickly due to issues stopping many users from updating. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we worked through that. We have now released NVDA 2024.1 Beta 10 which fixes those issues. Please do update and as always, do let us know if anything doesn’t work as expected.
Other improvements since Beta 7 include:
- A bug fix where emojis in Windows Terminals could cause a crash
- A bug fix for Native Selection mode in Word
- Improvements to documentation
- Updates to translations
Download the latest beta from the NVDA 2024.1 Beta 10 release announcement.
WebAIM survey results
The keenly awaited WebAIM Screen Reader User’s Survey #10 results are out, and there are some interesting results.
It was great to see strong support for NVDA, the most commonly used screen reader, and neck and neck with Jaws as the most popular primary screen reader.
Nearly 64% of respondents reported being very satisfied with their screen reader. 97.6% of NVDA users reported being somewhat or very satisfied with their screen reader, a very pleasing result!
One interesting statistic was that not only was Chrome used by 52.3% of respondents overall, but also by over half of NVDA users who completed the survey. We know Firefox has traditionally been a popular browser choice with NVDA users. That is still true, and I think what the result represents is that many users keep multiple browsers on hand and switch between them as needed. Which browser or browsers do you use? Share why in the conversation in the NVDA user’s chat group.
Using NVDA at work
81% of respondents to the WebAIM survey reported using a different screen reader at home compared to at work. Most organisations are very pleased to let users access their chosen assistive technology. Particularly when they discover that NVDA is free for them to use, even at work. Many organisations value the peace of mind of having telephone support and training material. We have found that the NVDA Productivity Bundle is very popular for this reason. We even offer a discount where organisations wish to purchase ths in bulk for their users.
We do occasionally hear from people who use NVDA at home and are told they need to use something different at work. If this has happened to you, please do let us know. We are happy to work with employers to ensure they can tick off everything they need in order to install the technology users need. We are quite happy to discuss details such as security and internet access with organisations.
We have recently re-organised our Corporate and Government page. We have made key information easier for organisations to find. We do of course welcome any additional questions organisations may have. or feedback on the change.
GitHub AT User’s survey
Michael Curren, our founder, passed on this survey from GitHub which would be worth completing:
Github have passed along a survey in which they would like to ask some
questions about assistive technology usage with Github. They
may be interested in asking further questions based on the answers.
If you have the time, Github would greatly appreciate if you could fill out the survey, as NVDA is an important and large group of AT users for github.
Mastodon Windows app survey
Meanwhile, in response to a user question, I conducted my own survey this week. Someone asked which Mastadon clients for Windows are most accessible with NVDA. As Mastadon is one of our most engaged social media communities, I asked this question of our followers.
The results I got were:
- Tweesecake 38%
- TW Blue 30%
- Enafore / Semaphore 32%
And several people use the web interface. Enafore is an updated project based on Semaphore, which users advise does not seem to be developed anymore.
That’s all for this week. Do try out the latest beta. If you like it, why not tell us how you’re finding the beta on Mastodon using your favourite Mastodon client