Free screen reader for computers running on the Windows operating system

NVDA

NVDA

  -  34.68 MB  -  Open Source
  • Latest Version

    NVDA 2024.3 LATEST

  • Review by

    Marian Marinescu

  • Operating System

    Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10 / Windows 11

  • User Rating

    Click to vote
  • Author / Product

    NV Access / External Link

  • Filename

    nvda_2024.3.exe

  • MD5 Checksum

    26c7d801d1be5047044577ffd58b52b2

NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) is a free “screen reader” which enables blind and vision-impaired people to use computers. It reads the text on the screen in a computerized voice. You can control what is read to you by moving the cursor to the relevant area of text with a mouse or the arrows on your keyboard.

The tool can also convert the text into braille if the computer user owns a device called a “braille display”. The app provides the key to education and employment for many blind people. It also provides access to social networking, online shopping, banking, and news.

NVDA works with Microsoft Windows. You can download it to your PC, or to a USB stick which you can use with any computer. Normally screen readers are expensive, making them unaffordable for many blind people. NVDA is free. It’s been downloaded 70,000+ times, in 43 languages.

  • NVDA 2024.3 Screenshots

    The images below have been resized. Click on them to view the screenshots in full size.

    NVDA 2024.3 Screenshot 1
  • NVDA 2024.3 Screenshot 2
  • NVDA 2024.3 Screenshot 3
  • NVDA 2024.3 Screenshot 4
  • NVDA 2024.3 Screenshot 5

What's new in this version:

New Features:
New key commands:
- Added unassigned commands for vertical and horizontal scrolling of the mouse wheel, to enhance navigation on web pages and apps with dynamic content, such as Dism++
- Added support for Unicode Normalization to speech and braille output
- This can be useful when reading characters that are unknown to a particular speech synthesizer or braille table and which have a compatible alternative, like the bold and italic characters commonly used on social media.
- It also allows reading of equations in the Microsoft Word equation editor
- You can enable this functionality for both speech and braille in their respective settings categories in the NVDA Settings dialog
- By default, after NVDA startup, you will be notified if any add-on updates are available
- This can be disabled in the "Add-on Store" category of settings
- NVDA checks daily for add-on updates
- Only updates within the same channel will be checked (e.g. installed beta add-ons will only notify for updates in the beta channel)
- Added support for the Help Tech Activator Pro displays

Changed:
Component updates:
- eSpeak NG has been updated to 1.52-dev
- Added new language Karakalpak
- Updated Unicode CLDR to version 45.0
- Updated fast_diff_match_patch (used to detect changes in terminals and other dynamic content) to version 2.1.0
- Updated LibLouis braille translator to 3.30.0

New braille tables:
- Cyrillic Serbian
- Yiddish
- Several ancient languages: Biblical Hebrew, Akkadian, Syriac, Ugaritic and transliterated Cuneiform text
- Turkish grade 2
- International Phonetic Alphabet
- Updated NSIS to 3.10
- Updated markdown to 3.6
- Updated nh3 to 0.2.17
- The fallback braille input table is now equal to the fallback output table, which is Unified English Braille Code grade 1
- NVDA will now report figures with no accessible children, but with a label or description
- When reading by line in browse mode, "caption" is no longer reported on each line of a long figure or table caption
- In the Python console, the last unexecuted command will no longer be lost when moving in the input history
- A unique anonymous ID is now sent as part of optional NVDA usage statistics gathering
- By default, a new folder will be created when making a portable copy. A warning message will inform you if you try writing to a non-empty directory

Bug Fixes:
Windows 11 fixes:
- NVDA will no longer appear to get stuck when closing the clipboard history and emoji panel
- NVDA will announce visible candidates again when opening the IME interface
- NVDA will no longer announce "clipboard history" twice when navigating through the emoji panel menu items
- NVDA will no longer cut off speech and braille when reviewing kaomojis and symbols in the emoji panel

Web browser fixes:
- Error messages referenced with aria-errormessage are now reported in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox
- If present, NVDA will now use aria-labelledby to provide accessible names for tables in Mozilla Firefox
- NVDA will correctly announce radio and checkbox menu items when first entering sub-menus in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox
- NVDA's browse mode find functionality is now more accurate when the page contains emojis
- In Mozilla Firefox, NVDA now correctly reports the current character, word and line when the cursor is at the insertion point at the end of a line
- No longer cause Google Chrome to crash when closing a document or exiting Chrome
- NVDA will announce correctly the autocomplete suggestions in Eclipse and other Eclipse-based environments on Windows 11
- Improved reliability of automatic text readout, particularly in terminal applications
- It is once again possible to reset the configuration to factory defaults reliably
- NVDA will correctly announce selection changes when editing a cell's text in Microsoft Excel
- In applications using Java Access Bridge, NVDA will now correctly read the last blank line of a text instead of repeating the previous line
- In LibreOffice Writer (version 24.8 and newer), when toggling text formatting (bold, italic, underline, subscript/superscript, alignment) using the corresponding keyboard shortcut, NVDA announces the new formatting attribute (e.g. "Bold on", "Bold off")
- When navigating with the cursor keys in text boxes in applications which use UI Automation, NVDA no longer sometimes reports the wrong character, word, etc
- When pasting into the Windows 10/11 Calculator, NVDA now correctly reports the full number pasted
- Speech is no longer silent after disconnecting from and reconnecting to a Remote Desktop session
- Support added for text review commands for an object's name in Visual Studio Code
- Playing NVDA sounds no longer fails on a mono audio device
- NVDA will report addresses when arrowing through To/CC/BCC fields in outlook.com / Modern Outlook
- NVDA now handles add-on installation failures more gracefully
- Changes for Developers
- NVDA now uses Ruff instead of flake8 for linting
- Fixed NVDA's build system to work properly when using Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 and above
- A fixed width font is now used in Log Viewer and in the NVDA Python Console so that the cursor remains in the same column during vertical navigation. It is especially useful to read the error location markers in tracebacks
- Support for custom braille tables has been added
- Tables can be provided in the brailleTables folder in an add-on package.
- Table metadata can be added to an optional brailleTables section in the add-on manifest or to a .ini file with the same format found in the brailleTables subdirectory of the scratchpad directory.
- Please consult the braille translation tables section in the developer guide for more details.
- When a gainFocus event is queued with an object that has a valid focusRedirect property, the object pointed to by the focusRedirect property is now held by eventHandler.lastQueuedFocusObject, rather than the originally queued object
- NVDA will log its executable architecture (x86) at startup
- wx.CallAfter, which is wrapped in monkeyPatches/wxMonkeyPatches.py, now includes proper functools.wraps indication
- There is a new module for scheduling tasks utils.schedule, using the pip module schedule
- You can use scheduleThread.scheduleDailyJobAtStartUp to automatically schedule a job that happens after NVDA starts, and every 24 hours after that. Jobs are scheduled with a delay to avoid conflicts.
- scheduleThread.scheduleDailyJob and scheduleJob can be used to schedule jobs at custom times, where a JobClashError will be raised on a known job scheduling clash.
- It is now possible to create app modules for apps hosting Edge WebView2 (msedgewebview2.exe) controls