Over the past fortnight we had a fantastic response to our braille survey, thank you! We already have some learnings to share with you! Plus, we’re nearly ready for NVDA 2024.4, are you? We’ve also been out in the community and have more travelling to do! And let’s learn about data validation in Excel.
- Braille Survey Results: Improving Braille Support in NVDA
- Elston Changemakers
- NVDA 2024.4 Release Candidate
- NV Access All-Hands
- Data Validation Improvements in Excel
Braille Survey Results: Improving Braille Support in NVDA
In our recent braille users survey we asked you, our dedicated community of users, for feedback on your experience of using braille with NVDA. We’re thrilled to report that, in less than a fortnight, over 100 of you responded with detailed feedback! These results have provided us with extremely helpful insights into how NVDA users work with braille. More importantly, they’ve given us suggestions on how we can improve the experience. Here’s what we learned:
Braille use in NVDA – The stats
95% of respondents to the survey use NVDA either daily or weekly, with 28% of users using speech more than braille. This reaffirms the critical role that braille in NVDA plays in supporting the blind and vision impaired community. Many of you use NVDA as part of a broader assistive technology ecosystem. 50% of respondents reported also using JAWS or VoiceOver. This illustrates how the use of NVDA often complements your use of other screen readers. We are proud to be part of this ecosystem of tools that enhance accessibility for everyone.
Positive feedback and room for growth
We’re happy to report that the majority of respondents had a favourable view of braille support in NVDA. Only 17% expressed concerns. While this is a strong indicator that we’re heading in the right direction, we’re committed to improving. Our aim for next year is to bring that percentage down significantly by addressing the issues you have raised.
You spoke, we listened – Actionable fixes
One of the key messages from your feedback is that performance matters. This is especially true in productivity applications like Microsoft Word. You reported recurring performance issues while using braille with Office. We have made it our priority to dig into this problem and develop a solution. We understand how crucial it is to have seamless integration between NVDA and Office. Improving this experience will be at the top of our list.
We have also fast-tracked finding solutions to a number of other frustrating braille issues you highlighted. These improvements will make their way into NVDA soon, and we can’t wait for you to experience the enhanced support. Your input directly shaped these changes, and we’ll continue listening to ensure NVDA serves you in the best way possible.
What’s next for braille in NVDA?
This survey was just the beginning. Your feedback has given us a clear roadmap for how to improve NVDA’s braille support. We commit to sharing updates on these developments throughout the next year. While we’re confident we are tackling the most pressing issues, we know that there’s always room for improvement and innovation. Your contributions, both through surveys like this one and GitHub issues, are crucial to our progress.
As always, we encourage you to reach out to us with further thoughts, suggestions, or to report any problems. Every improvement starts with you – our committed users.
Elston Changemakers
Earlier this year, founders of NV Access, Mick and Jamie, were part of the panel discussion at the Elston Changemakers event. Elston is a longtime supporter of NV Access, as well as of empowering communities.
“The Change Makers events shine a light on the transformative work being undertaken in communities right now. They’re not fundraisers. They’re forums that bring together charities, researchers and people who are interested in making a positive impact through giving.
At our most recent forum, we focused on the people who are creating new ways for disability to be turned into ability.”
You can watch the full video and listen to the fascinating discussion on Elston’s site.
Jamie and Mick in the Elston Changemakers panel
Look out for snippets from the event on our socials!
NVDA 2024.4 Release Candidate
NVDA 2024.4 is almost here. As mentioned last In-Process the NVDA 2024.4 release candidate is out now and we encourage everyone to try it out. Remember you can run the downloaded file, then choose “Continue running”. This lets you test out the new features without installing over your existing copy. Unless any significant issues are found, this is the last stage before the final NVDA 2024.4 release, likely in the next week or so. It did get pushed back slightly due to the All-Hands meeting (below), and several of us being out of the office this week.
NV Access All-Hands
Last week, the NV Access team got together in person to brainstorm and plan. Being spread across several states, we don’t get to all meet in person very often, but it’s very helpful to take the time to catch up when we can. If you contacted us over the last week or so and didn’t get a prompt response, that is likely why. We do thank you for your patience, and we’ll get back to you shortly if we haven’t already. It’s great to be back in the office, reinvigorated and ready to keep improving NVDA!
The NV Access staff gathered together
Data Validation Improvements in Excel
We’ve been talking lately about a lot of the amazing work which has gone into braille support in 2024.4 and beyond. As a counterpoint, I thought I’d pull out one point which is not specifically braille related. This fix in NVDA 2024.4 resolves a bug which has annoyed a lot of our Excel users: Data validation lists. Data validation lists let you specify the permissible values for a cell. Consider a spreadsheet of work tasks where this cell has the name of the employee who completed the task. Rather than making the user type the name in manually each time, a drop-down list can present a list of employees to choose from. Recently, reading such a list hasn’t been working so well, but we’re pleased to report that this now works again in NVDA 2024.4. But how do you make such a list? Let’s try it out:
- In Excel, choose the cell you’d like your list in
- Press alt+a for Data, then v for data validation, then enter to open the data validation dialog
- Press tab to allow which lets you select what kind of data is allowed in this cell (you could select whole number for instance, to allow only numbers such as 4 or 18, but not 12.37)
- Use the down arrow to select List
- Press tab to Source
- Using a named range is the best method as it is more future proof, but you can also type a set of values separated by commas, such as:
Barbara, David, Emily, John, Rebecca
- Press enter
Now when the focus moves to this cell, NVDA will report “Submenu, B2” (in this case, our list is in cell B2). Press alt+down arrow to open the list, then use the arrow keys to move through the options. Press enter to choose an option to populate the cell with.
If you’d like to learn more about Data Validation and using Excel with NVDA, we can help! You may find our “Microsoft Excel with NVDA” training module useful. If you are interested, it is available from the NVDA shop.
That’s all for this week, do try out the NVDA 2024.4 Release Candidate and quickly let us know of any issues. We’ll be back with more details on NVDA 2024.4 once it has been released!