New Features in NVDA
The below list of features is a subset of the full list of new features. I am simplifying and explaining the feature set in an attempt to help more nontechnical people appreciate what’s new for NVDA. This list was retrieved from NvAccess and edited here.
Highlights of NVDA 2020.1 include support for several new braille displays from HumanWare and APH, plus many other important bug fixes such as the ability to again read math in Microsoft Word using MathPlayer / MathType.
New Features
- The currently selected item in listboxes is again presented in browse mode in Chrome, similar to NVDA 2019.1.
- You can now perform right mouse clicks on touch devices by doing a one finger tap and hold.
- Support for New braille displays: APH Chameleon 20, APH Mantis Q40, HumanWare BrailleOne, BrailleNote Touch v2, and NLS eReader. (#10830)
Changes
- NVDA will prevent the system from locking or going to sleep when in say all.
- Updated liblouis braille translator to version 3.12.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed NVDA not announcing Unicode minus symbol (U+2212).
- When installing add-on from add-ons manager, names of files and folders in the browse window are no longer reported twice.
- In Firefox, when loading Mastodon with the advanced web interface enabled, all timelines now render correctly in browse mode.
- In browse mode, NVDA now reports “not checked” for unchecked check boxes where it sometimes didn’t previously.
- ARIA switch controls no longer report confusing information such as “not pressed checked” or “pressed checked”.
- SAPI4 voices should no longer refuse to speak certain text.
- NVDA can again read and interact with math equations in Microsoft Word.
- NVDA will again announce text being unselected in browse mode if pressing an arrow key while text is selected.
- NVDA no longer exits if there is an error initializing eSpeak.
- Errors caused by unicode in translations for shortcuts no longer stop the installer, mitigated by falling back to the English text.
- Arrowing out and away from lists and tables in sayAll with skim reading enabled no longer continuously announces exiting the list or table.
- Fix mouse tracking for some MSHTML elements in Internet Explorer.
Start Your Update
If you’re running NVDA while reading this, perform the following steps to update it right now!
- Press NVDA+N.
- Press the letter H, or arrow down to Help.
- Press the letter C, or arrow down to Check for update…
Enjoy your new NVDA!
Qapla!
Quentin Christensen
February 20, 2020Thanks for the write up!
For those using Jaws who want to explore NVDA, there is a guide (written by the community) which covers most things a Jaws user might want to know to help ease the transition. You can find it here: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda-community/wiki/SwitchingFromJawsToNVDA
The Geek on Skates
February 18, 2020Dude! Now that’s what I call an upgrade! I’m so glad to hear NVDA finally switched to Python 3. Not just for security (though that is a legit concern) but also because Python developers have been trying to phase out Python 2 for years. Throw in all the other things you just described (which I really want to mess with now, lol) and this is a big deal! Nothing against JAWS, but NVDA is definitely worth a look. 🙂
michael babcock
August 27, 2019this article makes me want to explore NVDA more. I have it installed mainly for those situations that Jaws does not accomplish the tasks I need it too. I’ve been using jaws off and on since 96 though, so am very comfortable with this screen reader, but I think it’s well time I give NVDA a good look!