NVDA Roadmap
This document outlines NV Access’s planned development roadmap for NVDA and its supporting infrastructure. Priorities are grouped into short, medium and long-term time-frames. This roadmap will be updated to reflect completed projects, development progress and significant changes in the world of screen readers and the wider technology space.
Short-Term Priorities
These priorities focus on enhancements and improvements that we aim to deliver in the near future.
- Braille enhancements: Addressing high priority issues highlighted by the community and improving the overall stability and performance of braille support in NVDA.
- Integration of NVDA Remote into core: Migrating the functionality of the NVDA Remote add-on into NVDA’s core for enhanced functionality and security.
- NV Access Remote server: Launching an official NV Access NVDA Remote Access proxy server.
- Anonymous identifier: Implementation of a system for generating unique, rotating, anonymous identifiers for NVDA installations, allowing for better data collection and analysis without compromising user privacy.
- Translator quality of life improvements: To facilitate the use of Crowdin by translators.
- End of support for Windows 8.1, 2012/R2: Officially ending support for older versions of Windows, allowing us to focus on developing for modern operating systems and their latest accessibility features.
Medium-Term Priorities
These priorities represent more significant features and improvements that require more extensive development effort, or that we aim to deliver after our short-term priorities.
- Secure add-ons: Building a more secure add-on runtime environment to protect users from potentially malicious add-ons.
- 64 bit migration: Updating NVDA’s low level code so that it runs natively in a 64 bit environment.
- Magnifier: Developing a built-in screen magnification feature to better support our low-vision users.
- MathCAT integration into core: Integrating the MathCAT math expression reader directly into the NVDA core, providing seamless access to mathematical content.
- Enhanced multi-line braille: UX improvements for the use of multi line braille devices with NVDA.
- Tactile graphics: Foundational UX work on enabling tactile graphic support in NVDA.
- Corporate mode: Compatibility and security settings to assist the deployment and maintenance of of NVDA in enterprise environments.
- Integrated AI image description: Free, secure, performant, private and VI-focussed on-device AI image description available out of the box.
- Help chatbot prototype: Exploring the development of an AI-powered chatbot to provide instant support and answer frequently asked questions about NVDA.
- Support for Microsoft Natural Voices: Adding support for Microsoft’s Natural Voices text-to-speech engine, providing access to high-quality synthetic voices.
- Web front end for Add-on Store: Creating a web-based front end for the NVDA Add-on Store, making it easier to browse and search for add-ons.
- Automated C++ and markdown linting: Implementing automated linting for C++ and Markdown files, further improving code quality and consistency.
- Harmonising GPL software license: Ensuring all aspects of NVDA are consistently licensed in a future-proof manner.
- Official training material for NVDA accessibility testers: Collecting together comprehensive training resources for individuals interested in becoming NVDA accessibility testers.
- Replacing py2exe: Due to end of life concerns.
Long-Term Priorities
These priorities represent ambitious goals and initiatives that will shape the future of NVDA, or that we aim to deliver after our medium-term priorities.
- Braille font attributes: Utilising multi-line braille to communicate font attributes of text.
- Braille switching: Dynamic switching of braille tables.
- Cross device configuration synchronisation: Allowing users to have portable cloud-based configuration profiles shared across devices.
- OCR improvements: Selection of alternative on-device OCR engines.
- Video call readiness: Audio cues on framing, lighting and obstructions.
- UI element recognition: Leveraging machine learning to identify and interpret inaccessible UI elements.
- End of support for Windows 10: Windows 10 goes out of extended support in October 2025, and at this stage we do not have a firm date for when NVDA will cease support for Windows 10. We will make this change when it becomes clear that it is in our users’ best interests for NVDA to end support. This will occur in a planned, phased manner.
- Add-on telemetry: Gathering anonymous data on add-on installations to understand usage patterns to help prioritise development efforts to improve the add-on ecosystem.
- Feature usage telemetry: Implementing anonymous telemetry to track feature usage within NVDA, helping us understand how users interact with the software and identify areas for improvement.
- ARM telemetry: Gathering anonymous data on ARM installations, providing insights into changing hardware usage patterns.
- Enhanced Office UIA support: Improvements to NVDA’s User Interface Automation support for Microsoft Office, providing a more robust and intuitive experience for navigating and interacting with spreadsheets.
- Python upgrade: To version 3.13
Contributing and Feedback
We encourage contributions from the community!
Please explore NVDA’s GitHub repository or user group to learn more about how you can get involved.