Blind Main

NV Access are pleased to advise that Beta (and alpha) versions of NVDA are once again available. To celebrate, we've released Beta 10 of NVDA 2025.1: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1beta10/

Beta 10 includes:

• Updates to translations
• Correct context help navigation for Remote Access dialogs

Thank you everyone for your patience and support, and as always with pre-release builds, please do file any issues on GitHub: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues

#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #News #PreRelease #FOSS #Beta

Crossposted from https://beehaw.org/post/20362400

Among the prominent leaders in the history of Blind education in Japan are Konishi Nobuhachi (1854-1938) and Ishikawa Kuraji (1859-1944), two sighted educators who contributed greatly to the early development of Japanese Braille in the 1880s and 1890s. Kunmōain, the school where Konishi and Ishikawa taught, opened its doors to blind and deaf students in 1880, and was renamed in 1887 as the Tokyo School for the Blind and Deaf (in short, the Tokyo School; the school was reorganized into a school for blind students in 1909, and a school for deaf students in 1910).

At the time in Japanese society, Blind education in schools, as well as Deaf education, was fairly new. People with disabilities, in general, had limited opportunities and support. The Tokyo School, which earned its status as a school under the direct authority of the Ministry of Education, was one of the few places in Japan where blind and deaf students with some financial means could receive formal education. In addition to a broad curriculum of academic courses, such as language, history, and mathematics, the school offered vocational training in music, acupuncture, and massage – the traditional professions of blind people. Shortly after Konishi was appointed to the school in 1886, Ishikawa joined the teaching staff there upon Konishi’s recommendation. Ishikawa’s immediate task was to thoroughly understand the principles of Braille and transform Braille into a suitable script for the Japanese language. This was no easy feat for anyone, not least because the phonetic and semantic nature of the Japanese scripts had to be accurately codified in the much more limited template of Braille dots.

Japanese Braille took shape over a few years of trial and error. Ishikawa and his committee aimed to develop a functional Japanese-based Braille template that could be used not only at the Tokyo School but also disseminated nationwide as the new standard script for Blind education. From early on, the committee made the crucial decision of comparing Braille with the Japanese kana syllabaries, which are phonetic characters and can be used in writing to represent the sounds of a vast number of kanji characters. [...]

Hi everyone,

UPDATE: The site is back up!

Thanks for your patience with the site over the last day. We sent it to bed without any supper last night, and it's back working this morning - https://www.nvaccess.org/ - you can download NVDA, read most of the pages, etc. A couple of things, including the certification exam and beta downloads are offline over the weekend, and we'll get those back up and running on Monday.

One of my closest and longest friends is starting a new YouTube channel documenting his journey to fulfill a life-long dream of his. Even though he's low vision, through a new program available in Ontario, he has the opportunity to gain his drivers license via the use of a bioptic telescope. If you love cars as much as he does, are just curious, or are a low vision person interested in what a program like this could mean for you, check out his first video on the channel! As far as I know, this is the first time someone has documented the journey of learning to drive with a bioptic telescope from day one, from the perspective of a person with a disability, rather than a doctor or other medical professional.

NVDA 2025.1 Beta 8 is now avaialble (You didn't miss Beta 7, there was a technical issue with the release and we had to immediately push beta 8).

Changes:

• Updates to translations
• Fixes for the Add-on Store & Remote Access in secure mode
• Fix reading math in PDFs
• Fix the toggle report CLDR script
• Fix issues when connecting to an untrusted relay server
• Documentation now includes a tab icon

Read the full update and download from https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1beta8/

#NVDA #NVDAsr #Beta #News

NVDA 2025.1 Beta 6 is now available!

Read the full details and download from: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1beta6/

Changes introduced in Beta 6:

• Updates to translations
• Fix for the COM registration fixing tool: don’t run when cancelling with alt+f4
• Minor fix for SAPI 4 voices
• Fix for Braille display detection
• Minor improvements to the user experience of Remote Access

Please continue to test and give feedback via GitHub!

#NVDA #NVDAsr #Beta #PreRelease #News #ScreenReader #Accessibility

I'm looking for an audio-described version of her 2013. And, at least on Blind Mice, I'm not seeing one, and that's where I normally find my audio-described movies.

Edit: Never mind, Blind Mice does have it. It just took me a while to realize that it had multiple pages that I had to click through.

Ok @main @mastoblind what do people use for their mastodon client on Windows with #NVDA? I have tried the web client but it's so so cluttered and there's no way to move through the feeds quickly. I'm on Dragonscave so I need something that will work with that.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29537608

This study explores the experiences of blind and low vision students at K-12 institutions. The students interviewed expressed choosing classes based on the accessibility of the materials. Teachers were frequently insensitive to them. They needed to navigate accessibility barriers in and out of the classroom constantly. Institutions should be more proactive about digital accessibility and offer more teacher training. Check out the full article for more info. #accessibility

NVDA 2025.1 Beta 5 now availableNVDA 2025.1 Beta 5 is now available! Changes since beta 4 include:

• Updates to translations
• Fixes for reading math attributes in PDFs
• Minor improvements to the user experience of Remote Access

Read the full details and download at: https://www.nvaccess.org/pos

I use Uber to commute about once a week and I’ve noticed that having my cane clearly visible makes drivers more likely to back up, make a U-turn or otherwise go out of their way to make the pickup and drop-off experience better for me.

I’ve also noticed a couple of Bolt drivers (that’s a similar company you get in Europe) literally not picking me up. Reported and handled, but I’ve stopped using that app.

Do you guys do anything to self-disclose before a pickup? Like send a message like “hi, please note I’m blind and may miss you where you arrive?” Some drivers have told me you can do that in your profile, but I can’t find any setting about that or info on Uber’s support pages, apart from the Uber Assist service that I don’t think I need.

Any particularly good or bad experiences with this?

@main @mastoblind Ok coming up on a month in and my #Beelink EQR6 #MiniPC has been great, best experience with a computer since I went #Blind. I have it set up as an always on headless device that I am operating with bluetooth headphones, my Bi40x #BrailleDisplay, and #NVDA.

I am not blind myself (yet) … But how do blind people feel about morse code for reading text (or writing it)? Is it a workable solution, or is neural-network based text-to-speech and speech to text preferred? Drawbacks of morsecode include that it takes long to learn and to master.

But these kind of signals can be even understood by blind or deaf people.

Morse code wiki link

NVDA 2025.1 Beta 4 is now available! Changes from Beta 3 include:

• Updates to translations
• Fix security issue which allowed an arbitrary process to connect to a Remote Access session running on a secure screen
• Allow Remote Access leaders to regain control after the last follower has disconnected
• Improve focus handling in the Remote Access Connection dialog
• Don’t toggle Remote Access mute when not connected

Read the full details & download from: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1beta4/

As it is the start of the month I shall do some shameless promoting of https://ourblind.com/ for all the #blind, #deafblind, #lowvision, and #visuallyimpaired people around. @main @mastoblind

@main @NVAccess So if this is a known thing I cannot find it, when closing some applications, Edge for example, with alt+f4 #NVDA does not focus anything afterward and instead just says "Window" which is also displayed on my braille display as a window marker and blank otherwise. This blank window requires using alt+tab, the windows key, or the like to get out of.

Call of Fate is a Chinese audiogame released on Android and IOS by Prudence Interactive, intended to be accessible to both blind and sighted players. These are my thoughts after playing for several days.

Our lates In-Process blog is out: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/in-process-30th-april-2025/

Featuring

• The NVDA 2025.1 Beta
• What’s New in 2025.1
• Updated NVDA Expert Certification 2025
• Gene Empowers New Zealand
• Changes for Developers
• NVDA Add-ons and API Breaking Changes

#NVDA #NVDAsr #Blog #News #Newsletter #ScreenReader #Blind #Accessibility #Update #Changes

@main @mastoblind Update on my #miniPC, it has been the best experience I have had with a computer since becoming #blind. has been up almost constantly for the not quite 2 weeks I have had it, only restarting for updates and such, it's happy as a clam to just be left alone and do its thing.

NVDA 2025.1 Beta 3 is now available for testing. As well as all the NVDA 2025.1 updates, beta3 adds:

• Updates to translations
• Disallow new Remote Access session in Secure Mode
• Update Remote Access interface
• Add unassigned command for Remote Access settings
• SAPI 4 bug fixes

Read the full release notes (including all the 2025.1 features & fixes) & download from: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1beta3/

#NVDA #NVDAsr #Update #Beta #FLOSS #FOSS #PreRelease #News #Testing #Test #FreeSoftware #ScreenReader

Ok, @main @mastoblind so I have a quandary, I got a new PC, it works great, I have been using it ton with #NVDA and my #BrailleDisplay, and I have realized I have no clue what to do with a PC… I have Discord, Outlook, and Reddit open almost always, but that's all things I do on my phone as well.

@main @mastoblind Ok anyone know if there's a screen saver type add on for #NVDA that will update focus? Due to either something with NVDA itself, or just good old #Microsoft being stupid it appears that #BrailleDisplay connected over bluetooth cannot clear screen savers, or do really anything after being disconnected for any amount of time without first moving the focus via something like a Qwerty keyboard. All that's needed is something that would overlay a few objects after nothing has updated focus for a bit, and then just juggle it between them.

Android 15 users, however, will have an issue: Samsung TTS can only be used with Samsung TalkBack. Multi-language automatic switching helpers like Tech Freedom, AutoTTS, and Multilingual TTS can’t use the Samsung voices

It is infuriating to see this happen, especially now that we have neural voices with an expressivity that’s better than it’s ever been.

This is a huge regression in accessibility, and comes off as a rather distasteful decision by Samsung. What motives would they have to nerf accessibility for users who want to continue using their existing screen readers with system default voices?

@main @mastoblind @NVAccess is there a way to have #NVDA input commands like Win+I or Alt+F4 when operated with a #BrailleDisplay? I cannot find an option to do this.