NVDA allows blind and vision impaired people to access and interact with the Windows operating system and many third party applications.

Features

  • Support for popular applications including web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, email clients, internet chat software, music players, and office programs such as Microsoft Word and Excel
  • Built-in speech synthesizer supporting over 55 languages, plus support for many other 3rd party voices
  • Reporting of textual formatting where available such as font name and size, style and spelling errors
  • Automatic announcement of text under the mouse and optional audible indication of the mouse position
  • Support for many refreshable braille displays, including input of Braille via braille displays that have a braille keyboard
  • Ability to run entirely from a USB flash drive or other portable media without the need for installation
  • Easy to use talking installer
  • Translated into more than 50 languages
  • Support for modern Windows Operating Systems including both 32 and 64 bit variants
  • Ability to run on Windows logon and other secure screens
  • Announcing controls and text while interacting with gestures on touch screens
  • Optional Telephone Support and comprehensive Training Material available at very low cost
  • Enthusiastic and helpful user community

System Requirements

  • Operating Systems: all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, and all Server Operating Systems starting from Windows Server 2008 R2.
  • For Windows 7, NVDA requires Service Pack 1 or higher.
  • For Windows Server 2008 R2, NVDA requires Service Pack 1 or higher.
  • Memory: 256 mb or more of RAM
  • Processor speed: 1.0 ghz or above
  • About 90 MB of storage space.

What's New

A new "on-demand" speech mode has been added. When speech is on-demand, NVDA does not speak automatically (e.g. when moving the cursor) but still speaks when calling commands whose goal is explicitly to report something (e.g. report window title). In the Speech category of NVDA's settings, it is now possible to exclude unwanted speech modes from the Cycle speech modes command (NVDA+s).

A new Native Selection mode (toggled by NVDA+shift+f10) is now available in NVDA's browse mode for Mozilla Firefox. When turned on, selecting text in browse mode will also manipulate Firefox's own native selection. Copying text with control+c will pass straight through to Firefox, thus copying the rich content, rather than NVDA's plain text representation.

The Add-on Store now supports bulk actions (e.g. installing, enabling add-ons) by selecting multiple add-ons There is a new action to open a reviews webpage for the selected add-on.

The audio output device and ducking mode options have been removed from the "Select Synthesizer" dialog. They can be found in the audio settings panel which can be opened with NVDA+control+u.

eSpeak-NG, LibLouis braille translator, and Unicode CLDR have been updated. New Thai, Filipino and Romanian braille tables are available.

There are many bug fixes, particularly for the Add-on Store, braille, Libre Office, Microsoft Office and audio.

Important notes

  • This release breaks compatibility with existing add-ons.
  • Windows 7, and Windows 8 are no longer supported. Windows 8.1 is the minimum Windows version supported.

New Features

Add-on Store:

  • The Add-on Store now supports bulk actions (e.g. installing, enabling add-ons) by selecting multiple add-ons. (#15350, #15623, @CyrilleB79)
  • A new action has been added to open a dedicated webpage to see or provide feedback about the selected add-on. (#15576, @nvdaes)
  • Added support for Bluetooth Low Energy HID Braille displays. (#15470)
  • A new Native Selection mode (toggled by NVDA+shift+f10) is now available in NVDA's browse mode for Mozilla Firefox. When turned on, selecting text in browse mode will also manipulate Firefox's own native selection. Copying text with control+c will pass straight through to Firefox, thus copying the rich content, rather than NVDA's plain text representation. Note however that as Firefox is handling the actual copy, NVDA will not report a "copy to clipboard" message in this mode. (#15830)
  • When copying text in Microsoft Word with NVDA's browse mode enabled, formatting is now also included. A side affect of this is that NVDA will no longer report a "copy to clipboard" message when pressing control+c in Microsoft Word / Outlook browse mode, as the application is now handling the copy, not NVDA. (#16129)
  • A new "on-demand" speech mode has been added. When speech is on-demand, NVDA does not speak automatically (e.g. when moving the cursor) but still speaks when calling commands whose goal is explicitly to report something (e.g. report window title). (#481, @CyrilleB79)
  • In the Speech category of NVDA's settings, it is now possible to exclude unwanted speech modes from the Cycle speech modes command (NVDA+s). (#15806, @lukaszgo1)
  • If you are currently using the NoBeepsSpeechMode add-on consider uninstalling it, and disabling "beeps" and "on-demand" modes in the settings.

Changes

  • NVDA no longer supports Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows 8.1 is the minimum Windows version supported. (#15544)
  • Component updates:Updated LibLouis braille translator to 3.28.0. (#15435, #15876, @codeofdusk)
  • Added new Thai, Romanian, and Filipino Braille tables.
  • eSpeak NG has been updated to 1.52-dev commit 530bf0abf. (#15036)
  • CLDR emoji and symbol annotations has been updated to version 44.0. (#15712, @OzancanKaratas)
  • Updated Java Access Bridge to 17.0.9+8Zulu (17.46.19). (#15744)
  • Key Commands:
  • The following commands now support two and three presses to spell the reported information and spell with character descriptions: report selection, report clipboard text and report focused object. (#15449, @CyrilleB79)
  • The command to toggle the screen curtain now has a default gesture: NVDA+control+escape. (#10560, @CyrilleB79)
  • When pressed four times, the report selection command now shows the selection in a browsable message. (#15858, @Emil-18)
  • Microsoft Office:
  • When requesting formatting information on Excel cells, borders and background will only be reported if there is such formatting. (#15560, @CyrilleB79)
  • NVDA will again no longer report unlabelled groupings such as in recent versions of Microsoft Office 365 menus. (#15638)
  • The audio output device and ducking mode options have been removed from the "Select Synthesizer" dialog. They can be found in the audio settings panel which can be opened with NVDA+control+u. (#15512, @codeofdusk)
  • The option "Report role when mouse enters object" in NVDA's mouse settings category has been renamed to "Report object when mouse enters it". This option now announces additional relevant information about an object when the mouse enters it, such as states (checked/pressed) or cell coordinates in a table. (#15420, @LeonarddeR)
  • New items have been added to the Help menu for the NV Access "Get Help" page and Shop. (#14631)
  • NVDA's support for Poedit is overhauled for Poedit version 3 and above. Users of Poedit 1 are encouraged to update to Poedit 3 if they want to rely on enhanced accessibility in Poedit, such as shortcuts to read translator notes and comments. (#15313, #7303, @LeonarddeR)
  • Braille viewer and speech viewer are now disabled in secure mode. (#15680)
  • During object navigation, disabled (unavailable) objects will not be ignored anymore. (#15477, @CyrilleB79)
  • Added table of contents to key commands document. (#16106)

Bug Fixes

Add-on Store:

  • When the status of an add-on is changed while it has focus, e.g. a change from "downloading" to "downloaded", the updated item is now announced correctly. (#15859, @LeonarddeR)
  • When installing add-ons install prompts are no longer overlapped by the restart dialog. (#15613, @lukaszgo1)
  • When reinstalling an incompatible add-on it is no longer forcefully disabled. (#15584, @lukaszgo1)
  • Disabled and incompatible add-ons can now be updated. (#15568, #15029)
  • NVDA now recovers and displays an error in a case where an add-on fails to download correctly. (#15796)
  • NVDA no longer fails to restart intermittently after opening and closing Add-on Store. (#16019, @lukaszgo1)

Audio:

  • NVDA no longer freezes briefly when multiple sounds are played in rapid succession. (#15311, #15757, @jcsteh)
  • If the audio output device is set to something other than the default and that device becomes available again after being unavailable, NVDA will now switch back to the configured device instead of continuing to use the default device. (#15759, @jcsteh)
  • NVDA now resumes audio if the configuration of the output device changes or another application releases exclusive control of the device. (#15758, #15775, @jcsteh)

Braille:

  • Multi line braille displays will no longer crash the BRLTTY driver and are treated as one continuous display. (#15386)
  • More objects which contain useful text are detected, and text content is displayed in braille. (#15605)
  • Contracted braille input works properly again. (#15773, @aaclause)
  • Braille is now updated when moving the navigator object between table cells in more situations (#15755, @Emil-18)
  • The result of reporting current focus, current navigator object, and current selection commands is now shown in braille. (#15844, @Emil-18)
  • The Albatross braille driver no longer handles a Esp32 microcontroller as an Albatross display. (#15671)

LibreOffice:

  • Words deleted using the control+backspace keyboard shortcut are now also properly announced when the deleted word is followed by whitespace (like spaces and tabs). (#15436, @michaelweghorn)
  • Announcement of the status bar using the NVDA+end keyboard shortcut now also works for dialogs in LibreOffice version 24.2 and newer. (#15591, @michaelweghorn)
  • All expected text attributes are now supported in LibreOffice versions 24.2 and above. This makes the announcement of spelling errors work when announcing a line in Writer. (#15648, @michaelweghorn)
  • Announcement of heading levels now also works for LibreOffice versions 24.2 and newer. (#15881, @michaelweghorn)

Microsoft Office:

  • In Excel with UIA disabled, braille is updated, and the active cell content is spoken, when control+y, control+z or alt+backspace is pressed. (#15547)
  • In Word with UIA disabled braille is updated when control+v, control+x, control+y, control+z, alt+backspace, backspace or control+backspace is pressed. It is also updated with UIA enabled, when typing text and braille is tethered to review and review follows caret. (#3276)
  • In Word, the landing cell will now be correctly reported when using the native Word commands for table navigation alt+home, alt+end, alt+pageUp and alt+pageDown. (#15805, @CyrilleB79)
  • Reporting of object shortcut keys has been improved. (#10807, #15816, @CyrilleB79)
  • The SAPI4 synthesizer now properly supports volume, rate and pitch changes embedded in speech. (#15271, @LeonarddeR)
  • Multi line state is now correctly reported in applications using Java Access Bridge. (#14609)
  • NVDA will announce dialog content for more Windows 10 and 11 dialogs. (#15729, @josephsl)
  • NVDA will no longer fail to read a newly loaded page in Microsoft Edge when using UI Automation. (#15736)
  • When using say all or commands which spell text, pauses between sentences or characters no longer gradually decrease over time. (#15739, @jcsteh)
  • NVDA no longer sometimes freezes when speaking a large amount of text. (#15752, @jcsteh)
  • When accessing Microsoft Edge using UI Automation, NVDA is able to activate more controls in browse mode. (#14612)
  • NVDA will not fail to start anymore when the configuration file is corrupted, but it will restore the configuration to default as it did in the past. (#15690, @CyrilleB79)
  • Fixed support for System List view (SysListView32) controls in Windows Forms applications. (#15283, @LeonarddeR)
  • It is not possible anymore to overwrite NVDA's Python console history. (#15792, @CyrilleB79)
  • NVDA should remain responsive when being flooded with many UI Automation events, e.g. when large chunks of text are printed to a terminal or when listening to voice messages in WhatsApp messenger. (#14888, #15169)
  • This new behavior can be disabled using the new "Use enhanced event processing" setting in NVDA's advanced settings.
  • NVDA is again able to track the focus in applications running within Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG). (#15164)
  • The speech text is no longer updated when the mouse moves in the Speech Viewer. (#15952, @hwf1324)
  • NVDA will again switch back to browse mode when closing combo boxes with escape or alt+upArrow in Firefox or Chrome. (#15653)
  • Arrowing up and down in combo boxes in iTunes will no longer inappropriately switch back to browse mode. (#15653)