- NonVisual Desktop Access
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Original author(s) Michael Curran Developer(s) NVDA team Initial release 2006 Stable release 2011.1.1 / April 7, 2011 Preview release 2011.2beta1 / June 20, 2011 Development status Active Written in Python Operating system Microsoft Windows Available in Afrikaans, Brazilian Portuguese, Galician, Croatian, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese Type Screen reader License GNU General Public License (Version 2) Website nvda-project.org Listen to this article (info/dl)
This audio file was created from a revision of NonVisual Desktop Access dated 2009-08-22, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)More spoken articlesNonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free, open source, portable screen reader for Microsoft Windows. The project was begun by Michael Curran in 2006. The latest version is 2011.1.1 NVDA is programmed in Python. It currently eschews video intercept techniques in favour of working with accessibility APIs such as Microsoft Active Accessibility, IAccessible2 and the Java Access Bridge. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License.
NVDA uses eSpeak as its integrated speech synthesizer, and also supports SAPI synthesizers.[1] Output to Braille displays is supported officially from Version 0.6p3.
Integration
Besides general Windows functionality, NVDA works with WordPad, Notepad and Internet Explorer. It supports the basic functions of Outlook Express, Microsoft Word 2000/XP/2003 and Microsoft Excel 2000/XP/2003 [1]. Support for the free office suites LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org requires the Java Access Bridge package. NVDA also supports Mozilla Firefox (version 3 or higher). Firefox is the recommended web browser for maximum barrier-free web browsing by the NVDA developers.
Since early 2009, NVDA supports the WAI-ARIA standard for Accessible Rich Internet Applications, so that in the future, web applications can be better used by blind persons.[2][3]
Support for email is provided with Mozilla Thunderbird version 3 or higher.
In release 2010.1, NVDA supports 64-bit editions of Windows, the login screen and User Account Control (UAC) screens, and has full support for Internet Explorer. It also has a newer version of the E-speak speech synthesizer, and in the newest snapshots, video hooks are being worked on.
Release 2010.2, from October 2010, added greatly simplified object navigation; virtual buffers for Adobe Flash content; access to many previously inaccessible controls by retrieving text written to the screen; flat review of screen text; support for IBM Lotus Symphony documents; reporting of table row and column headers in Mozilla Firefox; and significantly improved user documentation.
The current release is 2011.1.1, which adds automatic reporting of new text output in mIRC, PuTTY, Tera Term and SecureCRT; support for global plugins; announcement of bullets and numbering in Microsoft Word; additional key bindings for braille displays, including keys to move to the next and previous line; support for several Baum, HumanWare and APH braille displays; and reporting of colors for some controls, including IBM Lotus Symphony text controls.
References
- ^ a b NVDA Project: About NVDA.
- ^ Marco Zehe: NVDA 2009.1 beta, what’s in it for Firefox users?, Tuesday, October 27th, 2009.
- ^ What's New in NVDA (2009.1)
External links
Categories:- Free screen readers
- Free software programmed in Python
- Windows-only free software
- Screen readers
- Open Source screen readers
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