Happy International Day of People with Disability 2024! The theme for this year is “Amplifying the leadership of persons with disabilities for an inclusive and sustainable future”. I think our post today highlights just how the NVDA community live that theme day to day, so thank you to everyone who gets involved, in any capacity! This time around, we have information on:
- NVDA 2024.4.1 and Speech Dictionaries
- NVDA at Statewide Vision Resource Centre
- Thanks to ID24
- NVDA Contributor Documentation Survey
- Inspiring work in India!
- Building for the Future: NVDA’s Developer Communication & API Stability
NVDA 2024.4.1 and Speech Dictionaries
Last fortnight, we reported on the release of NVDA 2024.4.1. This patch release fixed a bug with speech dictionaries in NVDA 2024.4. All reports indicate that NVDA 2024.4.1 is working well, so please do update to this version if you haven’t already.
What are speech dictionaries? We have covered them previously, but they’re a way of changing how NVDA pronounces something. This might be an uncommon name or word, or an abbreviation which a synthesizer expands incorrectly. One common example of this is with some US voices for Windows OneCore Voices, the text “1 / 2 cup” (without a space between “1 / 2”) will be read as “one slash two Cuban pesos”. This does not make sense when reading a recipe and trying to work out how much flour to use. Speech dictionaries let NVDA intercept a string of characters and change them to send a different string of characters to the synthesizer. In this case, changing “cup” (all lowercase) or “CUP” (all uppercase) to “Cup” (capitalised C at the start) overcomes the issue. Changing the word to be read as “ cup” (add an extra space at the front) also works in this case.
Last time we shared instructions for using the Speech Dictionaries, I cheekily had NVDA replace any mention of a ‘meeting” with “nap”. What humorous use can you find for speech dictionaries? Let us know on social media, or in the NVDA chat group.
NVDA at Statewide Vision Resource Centre
Last week, Sascha and Quentin attended the Statewide Vision Resource Centre (SVRC) Tech Expo in Melbourne. It was a great event, as always, and we met lots of enthusiastic users, staff and teachers who work with end-users. Thanks to those who came by to say Hi or tuned in to our presentation online!
The day is a great chance for some of our younger users, and the teachers who work with them, to meet some of our staff and ask questions. As an example, one question we were asked on the day was about the Equation Editor in Word. One of the SVRC staff reported trouble reading equations with students. The benefit of being there in person was that we were able to look at the issue on their laptop at the time. We found that if you set NVDA to use UIA “Always”, it reads the equation editor quite well. This causes other features to behave differently, so it’s not a change we recommend everyone make. Please reach out to us if you need help changing advanced settings. We have now created an issue to change how we access the equation editor in Word, which will hopefully make it better for everyone.
Thanks to ID24
Inclusive Design 24 was a huge success again this year. “Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) is a free 24-hour online event for the global community. It celebrates inclusive design and shares knowledge and ideas from analogue to digital, from design to development, from planners to practitioners, and everything and everyone in between.”
We are very proud and humbled that ID24, their supporters, speakers, guest hosts and team members have once again made a generous donation to NV Access. Thank you so much to everyone involved! The work ID24 does in spreading awareness of inclusive design techniques and tips and the support they give us, is greatly appreciated. Both will benefit many around the world!
NVDA Contributor Documentation Survey
The NVDA contributor Documentation Survey we mentioned last week is still open. We are very interested in hearing from users who do or would like to contribute to NVDA. Your insights will help us understand the strengths and weaknesses of our contributor documentation, and we will use these insights to make targeted improvements. There are many ways you can contribute to NVDA. These include:
Translation (UI and user guide) Core NVDA software development Add-on software development Testing NVDA Submitting GitHub issues Triaging GitHub issues
If you are interested, please complete the survey here.
This survey should take around 5 minutes to complete.
Inspiring work in India!
Recently we saw a post on LinkedIn which we had to share with you. Digital Compassion posted:
“Heartfelt admiration for the incredible students of SSMB Blind School, Barhampur! 🌟
Their eagerness to learn and quick adaptability to digital skills is truly inspiring. A big shoutout to the dedicated efforts of Mr. Bakhtiar Ahmed for guiding them with such passion and patience. 🙌 Special thanks to NVDA for making digital inclusion a reality for these bright minds. Together, we’re witnessing the power of education and technology! 💻✨
The post includes a video showing students at the school using laptops with NVDA. Note that the audio is only music without description.
Building for the Future: NVDA’s Developer Communication & API Stability
We’ve been talking a lot about stability and add-on compatibility in our recent posts. Today, let’s take a look at how NV Access ensures a smooth transition for developers during major NVDA updates and what we’re doing to build an even more stable future for add-ons.
Navigating Major Transitions
NVDA has undergone significant transformations over the years (and will continue to do so into the future). One of the largest examples for both NV Access and developers was the transition from Python 2 to Python 3. This was a major undertaking, but we took careful steps to minimise disruptions for both users and developers. We provided extensive documentation, support and tools to help developers adapt their add-ons to the new Python version.
We believe that open communication and keeping developers informed about upcoming changes to NVDA is key. For this reason we provide clear timelines for when new versions will be available for testing, giving developers ample opportunity to ensure their add-ons are compatible.
That being said, the vast majority of NVDA add-ons transition smoothly to new API-breaking versions of NVDA with no issues. Since then, we have created an API Changes mailing list, which all NVDA add-on developers are expected to be subscribed to. This ensures all developers are proactively notified of upcoming changes to NVDA’s API up to a year in advance.
Looking Ahead: A More Stable Future for Add-ons
We’re constantly working to improve the developer experience and further enhance NVDA’s stability. One exciting development is our work on a secure add-on system. This system will run add-ons in a secure container, separated from NVDA’s internal workings. In addition to increasing the security and privacy of our users, this enhancement will have the added advantage of significantly reducing (or even eliminating) add-on incompatibilities with future NVDA updates!
That’s all for this week! We’re excited about where NVDA is at, the future of NVDA and its add-on ecosystem. Stay tuned for more updates and exciting developments! Do please try out speech dictionaries in NVDA 2024.4.1 (and let us know what humorous use you can put them to). Do also feel encouraged to complete the contributor documentation survey, and finally, have an empowering day of people with disability!