NCBI Labs recently caught up with Quentin Christensen, Training and Support
Manager at NV-Access, to find out all about the free open source Screen
Reader NVDA.
Q1. What is NVDA and who is it used by?
NVDA is a "Screen reader", software which reads aloud (or displays on a
connected Braille display) the information from the computer, which a
sighted user would read visually on screen. Here's a video we made on
exactly that question which demos NVDA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCFyyqy9mqo.
Q2. What was the original inspiration behind creating NVDA?
Michael Curran and James Teh met as children on a music camp for the blind,
where they realised they shared a strong interest in computers. Several
years later they decided to join forces to help improve the accessibility of
computers for blind and vision impaired people.
For blind people to use a computer, they need a screen reader which reads
the text on the screen in a synthetic voice or with a braille display. But
in many cases screen reading software costs more than the computer itself.
In the past this has left computers inaccessible to millions of blind people
around the world. This is a critical problem, because without computers,
access to education and employment is severely limited, not to mention
everyday functions such as online banking, shopping and news.
In April 2006 Michael began to develop a free screen reader called NVDA
(Non-Visual Desktop Access) for use with computers running on Windows. He
invited James, who had recently completed his IT degree, to develop the
software with him.
Together these two fully blind men founded the not-for-profit organisation
NV Access to support the development of the NVDA screen reader. Before too
long they were able to work full-time on the project thanks to a series of
corporate grants and individual donations.
NVDA has been translated by volunteers into more than 55 languages, and been
used by people in more than 175 countries. It has also won multiple awards.
NVDA is open source software, which means the code is accessible to anyone.
This enables translators and developers around the world to continually
contribute to its expansion and improvement.
Q3. So how do NV Access make money to develop NVDA if it is free?
NV Access receives income from several sources:
* Corporate partnerships. We work with IT industry leaders, sharing
our expertise in accessibility. This helps to make the programs you use
every day more accessible. Would you like us to work with your organisation?
Contact us for more information:
*
https://www.nvaccess.org/contact/.
* Private donations and corporate sponsorships. NV Access is a
registered charity in Australia. As a charity, we are able to accept
tax-deductible donations. Donate here:
* https://www.nvaccess.org/donate/.
* The NV Access shop. Training, phone support and NVDA Certified
Expert listing benefit end users and help NV Access. The NV Access shop is
here:
http://www.nvaccess.org/shop/ ;
and more information on the certification program is here:
https://certification.nvaccess.org/.
Q4. Can NVDA be set up and used in a workplace environment?
Definitely! We have many users in corporate environments. We've setup a
page with answers to common questions about setting up in corporate
environments here:
https://www.nvaccess.org/corporate-government/. Some of the key information
there are links to documents such as our
privacy policy, collected data and about open source software. There are
still misconceptions about open source software. It is just as secure as
closed source software - only NV Access can merge code into NVDA. We have a
detailed workflow to ensure safety and stability and checking of any new
code (whether developed in-house or from community contributions).
Governments around the world are also embracing open source and we have
links to some on that page. The training material and telephone support
available from our shop are also popular with our corporate, education and
government sector users. Currently we have local telephone support numbers
in the USA and Australia.
Q5. What is new in the most recent version of NVDA?
The latest version currently is NVDA 2020.3, which includes "Several large
improvements to stability and performance particularly in Microsoft Office
applications. There are new settings to toggle touchscreen support and
graphics reporting. The existence of marked (highlighted) content can be
reported in browsers, and there are new German braille tables.
Other improvements we've added in the last year include:
* Support for new Braille displays from Nattiq, Humanware and APH.
* Braille viewer (useful for those testing to confirm Braille output
without a connected Braille display).
* Better support for Eset Anti-Virus.
* Improvements in Windows terminal, 1Password, Microsoft Office and
with OneCore Voices.
* Screen curtain (makes the screen black for privacy).
* Focus Highlight (visually highlights where the cursor is for low
vision users).
There is also a link to the full "What's new" document in NVDA's help menu,
or from the download page:
https://www.nvaccess.org/download/.
Q6. What can we expect with the next version of NVDA?
We currently have a "release candidate" of NVDA 2020.4 available, which
includes: "new Chinese Input methods, an update to Liblouis and the elements
list (NVDA+F7) now works in focus mode. Context sensitive help is now
available when pressing F1 in NVDA dialogs. Improvements to symbol
pronunciation rules, speech dictionary, Braille message and skim reading.
Bug fixes and improvements to Mail, Outlook, Teams, Visual Studio, Azure
Data Studio, Foobar2000. On the web, there are improvements to Google Docs,
and greater support for ARIA. Plus many other important bug fixes and
improvements.
We expect the final NVDA 2020.4 to be released next week (week 15th Feb)
unless there are any delays. I should add, the reason it is called 2020.4
rather than 2021.1 is because we started the process in 2020. We didn't want
to rush to put out something right before Christmas and would rather push
back a release to ensure we give users a stable product - rather than push
out something which may not be ready yet simply to meet an arbitrary
deadline. We did in fact find a couple of bugs we were keen to squash
before the release, hence why it did get pushed back to February. You can
find the release candidate on the NV Access site here:
https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2020-4rc1/. ;
Q7. Where can someone go to download NVDA?
The download page is:
https://www.nvaccess.org/download/.
Meanwhile on the main site:
https://www.nvaccess.org/ ;
you can find links to all the things I've mentioned already, as well as
links to:
* Our user email group:
* https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda.
* Our In-Process blog:
https://www.nvaccess.org/category/in-process/.
* Our shop:
https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/.
* Ways you can donate:
* https://www.nvaccess.org/support-us/.
Q8. How can someone make contact with NV Access with a specific query?
The best way to get directly in touch is our email address:
info@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:info@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
The user email group is great for general queries anyone in the community
may be able to answer (and potentially a quicker answer during the day in
Ireland):
https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda ;
We're also on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/NVAccess.
You can watch an interview with Quentin Christensen from NV Access on
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXHKQA7z6Ec> Live Event 32 on YouTube.
