Beta4 of NVDA 2024.3 is now available for download and testing. For anyone who is interested in trying out what the next version of NVDA has to offer before it is officially released, we welcome you to download the beta and provide feedback.
Please note, we have recently updated our code signing certificate. This certificate gives peace of mind that you are running a genuine copy of NVDA, and is a newer version of the certificate we have been using (which needs to be updated every few years). While the certificate is new, Windows may give a warning that Windows Defender prevented an unrecognised program from running. It is important to take note of warnings like this, but in this case, it is expected. When the warning appears, press tab to “More info”, then press enter. Reading through the dialog, note that the publisher is listed as:
“AU, Queensland, Camp Mountain, NV Access Limited, NV Access Limited”
To allow NVDA to run, press tab to “Run anyway”, and press enter to run the installer. This will help us get through this period until Windows considers our certificate “trusted”.
By installing the beta you will be opting into NVDA’s beta channel, and will only receive update notifications for beta and release candidate (RC) builds. The beta channel will always keep you up to date with latest NVDA version, where the latest RC build will be identical to the latest stable build if no newer RC is available. To return to the stable release channel, upgrade manually to the latest stable build.
Links
- Download NVDA 2024.3beta4
- SHA256 sum: f61cc30ffd285aeee4b5679280d0d0480c7838f7b7b50c12c5ca595b6c912006
- What’s new in this release of NVDA
- Please report any issues on GitHub.
Highlights
The Add-on Store will now notify you if any add-on updates are available on NVDA startup.
There are now options to apply Unicode normalization to speech and braille output. This can be useful when reading characters that are unknown to a particular speech synthesizer or braille table and which have a compatible alternative, like the bold and italic characters commonly used on social media. It also allows reading of equations in the Microsoft Word equation editor.
Help Tech Activator Pro braille displays are now supported.
Unassigned commands have been added to scroll the mouse wheel vertically and horizontally.
There are several bug fixes, particularly for the Windows 11 Emoji Panel and Clipboard history. For web browsers, there are fixes for reporting error messages, figures, captions, table labels and checkbox/radio button menu items.
LibLouis has been updated, adding new Braille tables for Cyrillic Serbian, Yiddish, several ancient languages, Turkish, and the International Phonetic Alphabet. eSpeak has been updated, adding support for the Karakalpak language. Unicode CLDR has also been updated.
Changes introduced in Beta 4:
- Fix reporting addresses in Modern Outlook To/CC/BCC fields
- Improved handling of errors when installing add-ons, fixed bug where failed add-on updates remove the installed add-on
- Minor fixes to improve updating a portable copy
- Updates to translations
Changes introduced in Beta 3:
- Add-on update notifications no longer appear when running the NVDA installer
- Updates to translations
Changes introduced in Beta 2:
- Fix for reading messages in Windows Mail
- Added International Phonetic Alphabet braille table
- Bug fix for audio output on a mono audio device
- Bug fixes for Unicode normalization
- Updates to translations
