If you have ever watched a sighted friend open a web page, you might have noticed something a little unfair. Their eyes skim past the menu, the cookie banner, the ad for a newsletter, the row of “you might also like” links, and they land on the article in a second. They tune out the noise without thinking about it.
Screen reader users have always had to walk past all of it one item at a time, pressing H to find a heading, tabbing through the links, arrowing down through paragraph after paragraph, and by the time you finally reach the actual article, the sighted person next to you is already three paragraphs in. That is the gap Text Marks the Spot closes.
I built Text Marks the Spot because I kept noticing how effortlessly my sighted friends could land right on the meat of a page, and I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be great if a screen reader could do something close to that? That is how Text Marks the Spot was born, and my hope is that it takes some of the friction out of getting to the part of the page you actually came for.
Hear it first
Listen to a short clip of the add-on flipping through three web pages.
What it does
When you open a web page with NVDA, the cursor goes straight to where the content actually starts, you hear a short beep, and NVDA reads that first paragraph to you, with nothing to configure and no setup to fuss over: you just open the page and listen.
The add-on works out what kind of page you are on in the background. On an article, it lands on the first real paragraph. On a list of stories or search results, the cursor goes to the first headline so you can scan with H. Forms get a different treatment: the title is announced and focus moves to the first field. A “thank you for submitting” page drops you on the status line. Speed tests and weather widgets land on the label so the value reads on the next arrow press.
If the add-on cannot make sense of the page, it stays quiet and your usual NVDA keys behave the way they always have. A wrong guess would be worse than no guess.
Three keys, that is it
The add-on only uses three gestures, and every other NVDA key still works exactly the way you expect.
Z in browse mode scans forward from where you are to the next real paragraph. It skips headings (you have H for that) and skips ads, menus, and share buttons.
Shift+Z jumps you back to where the add-on first placed you on the current page. Handy when you have wandered with arrow keys and want to start over.
NVDA+Z adds or removes the current site from the exclusion list. If you have a site where you would rather the add-on stay out of your way, this is your switch. On an excluded site, a double-press of Z runs the add-on once without changing the list.
A win for new screen reader users
If you teach someone to use a screen reader, the web is often where it starts to feel hard. A newcomer pressing Tab through a long menu, then arrow down through cookie notices, then finally reaching the article many keypresses later, is a newcomer who is going to be tired by the third page.
Text Marks the Spot changes the first few minutes of that experience. The newcomer opens a page, hears the short beep, and the article is already being read. The H key and the Tab key come later, on the student’s own time, once they have built confidence from actually reading things successfully.
For assistive-technology trainers and rehabilitation teachers: there is nothing site-specific to memorize and nothing the student has to configure. Install once, restart NVDA, and every web page the student opens for the rest of the lesson lands them on the content.
Why this feels different
Most accessibility add-ons add new keys you have to learn. Text Marks the Spot tries to add value with as few keys as possible. The whole point is that you should not have to do anything for the simple case. The cursor is already where you want it. You just read.
Everything runs locally. No network calls, no AI, no telemetry. The add-on looks at the same information NVDA already uses to read a page. Nothing leaves your machine.
Get it
Get the latest version of Text Marks the Spot on GitHub. Download the .nvda-addon file, open it, accept the install prompt, restart NVDA, and open any web page.
Text Marks the Spot is now in the NVDA Add-on Store. Install it from the store and updates happen automatically.
A small ask
If you try it and it does the right thing, that is the point and there is nothing to do. If it picks the wrong place, please file an issue with the URL and a short note about what you heard versus what you wanted. Real-world page shapes are the only thing that improves the heuristic.
Open the page. Listen for the beep. You are there.
Qapla!