Welcome to the second edition of In-Process. Last Thursday was Australia’s national holiday, Australia Day, and we all had the day off instead of compiling what we were up to. We’re back again this week!
The server upgrade has successfully completed. Thanks for putting up with a small amount of downtime last week. Every page on nvaccess.org now uses https:// rather than http:// making the whole site more secure. Previously https:// security was available only in select areas of the site such as the shop.
The upgrade slightly delayed the release of the Daisy MP3 version of the “Basic Training for NVDA” module. We are pleased to announce it is now available in the NV Access Shop. The product page for the audio version, also includes a link to a sample of the material to give you a feel for the full product (the sample is provided as one MP3 file for convenience. The complete module comes with full daisy markup).
For those who have completed the Basic Training for NVDA module, or who have an extensive working knowledge of NVDA, we have also started testing the certification system. It’s not quite ready to roll out fully yet, but it is on the way. A big thanks to Derek and Joseph for their excellent bug finding. If you are interested in the training material, it’s available from the NV Access Shop. Note that you won’t have to have the training material to sit the certification, but it is very good preparation.
Reef has been quite busy this week working on increasing ARIA 1.1 support in NVDA. In a nutshell, ARIA is a technical specification that can be used to make web applications accessible. It doesn’t replace the traditional web building blocks of HTML or CSS, but works alongside them to make modern applications such as dynamic content and various user interface components more accessible. Essentially, used properly, it enables web developers to write web pages that have fancy dynamic content which is accessible.
As we approach NVDA 2017.1, we have now entered the translation freeze period. That means that all the new and updated features which will be in NVDA 2017.1 have now been submitted, and the translators now have a couple of weeks to finish localising the text and messages so that they can be included. The first release candidate for 2017.1 is NOT yet available. We will be sure to let you know as soon as it is (in about a fortnight).
For those using insider builds of Windows 10, we have worked around the latest issues with Microsoft Edge. If you’d like to test that Edge with those fixes, they are currently available in NVDA Next builds, and that will also be incorporated in NVDA 2017.1.
That’s all for this week. Have a great week and if you missed it, check out the great video by @EnableIndiaTV on how NVDA is changing lives in India.