May 31, 2022 10:29 am

The big news this time around, is, of course, the release of NVDA 2022.1! Let’s start there:

NVDA 2022.1

NVDA 2022.1 came out last week. Here are the highlights from the release announcement: “This release includes major improvements to UIA support with MS Office. For Microsoft Office 16.0.15000 and higher on Windows 11, NVDA will use UI Automation to access Microsoft Word documents by default. This provides a significant performance improvement over the old Object model access.

There are improvements to braille display drivers including Seika Notetaker, Papenmeier and HID Braille. There are also various Windows 11 bug fixes, for apps such as Calculator, Console, Terminal, Mail and Emoji Panel.

eSpeak-NG and LibLouis have been updated, adding new Japanese, German and Catalan tables.”

Let’s back up to that first point, about improvements to Office with UIA. If you’re wondering just what is “UIA”, or “UI Automation”, then wonder no more! We posted some information about UIA here in In-Process last year. At that time we had added experimental support for it in Excel and Chromium.

NVDA 2022.1 has many improvements, fixes and new features and we encourage all users to update.

Add-ons

NVDA 2022.1 is an add-on compatibility breaking release. This means that add-on authors need to update their add-ons to be compatible with this release. Having done that, most add-ons should be compatible from NVDA 2021.1 through to the 2022.x releases.

If you are wondering if your favourite add-on has been updated, the majority have. As of Monday 30th May, roughly 80% of add-ons work with NVDA 2022.1. Thanks Joseph and Noelia for all your hard work with the add-on community and for keeping us informed!. They have collated Add-ons and backwards incompatible NVDA releases. That page also includes contact details for add-ons which have not yet been updated. If your favourite add-on hasn’t been updated, please do reach out to the author.

NVDA Satisfaction Survey 2022

NV Access is pleased to invite you to participate in the NVDA Satisfaction Survey 2022. As in previous years, this is a simple, three-question survey. The survey is open to NVDA users and testers around the world. We encourage everyone to complete the NVDA Satisfaction Survey 2022.

The survey will be open until early July. Please do participate, and share with others, thank you!

Certification Update

NV Access is pleased to announce the availability of the NVDA Certified expert 2022. This update brings the NVDA Certified Expert exam into line with the newly released NVDA 2022.1. We’ve already been busy sending out updated certificates, and we’d love it if you join them! A reminder for those who have purchased the certification, the update comes at a 50% discount!

So, what is the NVDA Expert Certification? Simply, it’s an online exam which tests your knowledge of all things NVDA. The exam itself is free to sit, so anyone can do it. Once you pass, you have the option to purchase the certificate. Purchasing the certification gets you exclusive benefits:

• Listing on https://certification.nvaccess.org/. You can also list your professional contact details. That way, people looking for a local NVDA expert can find you. We at NV Access also use the list when people ask us if there is someone local who can help them. The more information you put there, the easier it is to get people who need help in touch with people who can help them.
• A professional, accessible certificate in PDF form. If you choose, you can print it out on letter or A4 paper and frame it.
• A badge you can include in your email signature or on your website. Highlight your professionalism with your certification!

Plus, purchasing NVDA Expert Certification helps support NV Access, the company behind NVDA. This enables us to continue to provide NVDA for free to anyone anywhere in the world who can use it.

Pictured above is Carlos with his certificate. Read more about Carlos, an ‘Ace’ of Technology in Ecuador in our NVDA Stories. Have you updated your certification? We’d love a photo of you with your certificate via E-Mail or on Twitter!

GitHub Blog mention

GitHub is the site we use for our Issue Tracker and where you can find NVDA’s source code. This week, there was an article on the GitHub blog about accessibility. The title is “How we’re continuing to enable all developers to build”. The piece includes info on GitHub accessibility and links to accessibility related projects. We’d encourage you to read it for that already. NVDA is one of the “amazing open-source accessibility projects” they chose to highlight. This is exciting, and we thank GitHub for the shout out. The article includes ways you can contribute to accessibility in projects including NVDA.

Thanks GitHub!

State of Digital Accessibility donation

Level Access is a company who “empowers organizations to create accessible & inclusive digital experiences”. Each year they publish the State of Digital Accessibility Report. “A report full of Insights, trends, and tips to help organizations better serve people with disabilities.”

Each year, Level Access make a donation to a worthy cause. They asked participants in the 2022 survey to nominate a disability-related non-profit to receive a $5,000 donation. This year, the chosen organisation was WebAIM. You might be familiar with them from the WebAIM Million and from their WebAIM Screen Reader User survey). WebAIM generously chose to split the donation with NV Access. We are very grateful to WebAIM, Level Access and all of the survey participants. Thank you!

That’s all for this week. Do download NVDA 2022.1 if you haven’t already. Remember to have your say in the NVDA Satisfaction Survey 2022, and test your skill with the NVDA Expert Certification exam!