NVAccess and the slow Erosion of trust: I still believe that NVDA is the best available screen reader, and I still donate monthly.
-
NVAccess and the slow Erosion of trust: I still believe that NVDA is the best available screen reader, and I still donate monthly. These are just a chronicle of decisions that have made me go... Huh. What? stuff.interfree.ca/2026/05/20/nvaccess-and-the-slow-erosion-of-trust.html #screenreader #nvda #a11y
@fastfinge Error Code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG
Secure Connection Failed
I'm using Firefox if that helps any. was hoping to read your article. -
P pixelate@tweesecake.social shared this topic
-
NVAccess and the slow Erosion of trust: I still believe that NVDA is the best available screen reader, and I still donate monthly. These are just a chronicle of decisions that have made me go... Huh. What? stuff.interfree.ca/2026/05/20/nvaccess-and-the-slow-erosion-of-trust.html #screenreader #nvda #a11y
@fastfinge And this from Microsoft Edge:
"The connection for this site is not secure
stuff.interfree.ca sent an invalid response.
ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR" -
R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic
-
NVAccess and the slow Erosion of trust: I still believe that NVDA is the best available screen reader, and I still donate monthly. These are just a chronicle of decisions that have made me go... Huh. What? stuff.interfree.ca/2026/05/20/nvaccess-and-the-slow-erosion-of-trust.html #screenreader #nvda #a11y
@fastfinge Very interesting read, and thanks for putting it together. In particular, the "on-device image description" section piqued my interest as I thought, and mentioned several times on Mastodon, that with such a poor output quality, it shouldn't have found its way into alphas in the first place.
-
@fastfinge Very interesting read, and thanks for putting it together. In particular, the "on-device image description" section piqued my interest as I thought, and mentioned several times on Mastodon, that with such a poor output quality, it shouldn't have found its way into alphas in the first place.
@amir I agree. But I do think it was worth exploring. In the same way I wrote my proof of concept AI text to speech addons. Without actually making them, I wouldn't have fully understood what a bad idea that is, and why it's a bad idea. I would have loved to see NVDA develope a prototype on-device image description addon. Then maybe realize it wasn't good enough and scrap it. But of course, as an addon, someone else could pick up the work if they thought they could salvage it. Because it was in core, now it's removed, and nobody else can hack on it even if they want to. -
@amir I agree. But I do think it was worth exploring. In the same way I wrote my proof of concept AI text to speech addons. Without actually making them, I wouldn't have fully understood what a bad idea that is, and why it's a bad idea. I would have loved to see NVDA develope a prototype on-device image description addon. Then maybe realize it wasn't good enough and scrap it. But of course, as an addon, someone else could pick up the work if they thought they could salvage it. Because it was in core, now it's removed, and nobody else can hack on it even if they want to.
@fastfinge Agreed. But I even faced difficulty, and soft criticism, communicating the poor output of the feature to NVAccess. I was under the impression that they wanted me, and others, not to expect much from a feature like that, while praising its privacy-focused, on-device aspects.
-
@fastfinge Agreed. But I even faced difficulty, and soft criticism, communicating the poor output of the feature to NVAccess. I was under the impression that they wanted me, and others, not to expect much from a feature like that, while praising its privacy-focused, on-device aspects.
@amir Yes. And I experienced hard criticism for even discussing a security feature in public. This, too, is a problem. Is NVAccess under funding pressure? Are they struggling to get grants, and public criticism of them is endangering that? Repeat it with me, everyone: I'm probably missing context, so I'll just have to trust that NVAccess knows things I don't. -
@amir Yes. And I experienced hard criticism for even discussing a security feature in public. This, too, is a problem. Is NVAccess under funding pressure? Are they struggling to get grants, and public criticism of them is endangering that? Repeat it with me, everyone: I'm probably missing context, so I'll just have to trust that NVAccess knows things I don't.
@fastfinge @amir Security through obscurity isn't always the way to go. Especially where community trust is involved.
-
NVAccess and the slow Erosion of trust: I still believe that NVDA is the best available screen reader, and I still donate monthly. These are just a chronicle of decisions that have made me go... Huh. What? stuff.interfree.ca/2026/05/20/nvaccess-and-the-slow-erosion-of-trust.html #screenreader #nvda #a11y
@fastfinge I wish so much of this wasn't on-point.
* I don't have enough of an understanding of the addon store stuff to be informed, but pulling Remote into core seemed a lot of work for relatively little gain to me.
* the on-device description stuff was mad, given the profusion of other addons already out there and its crapness when they did work on it,
* and the lack of a bridge from 64 bit felt like a kick in the teeth. as you say: the move was needed, but the support for developers fell short.I love NVDA and will champion it, but I do wonder about the direction and decisionmaking sometimes.
-
@fastfinge I wish so much of this wasn't on-point.
* I don't have enough of an understanding of the addon store stuff to be informed, but pulling Remote into core seemed a lot of work for relatively little gain to me.
* the on-device description stuff was mad, given the profusion of other addons already out there and its crapness when they did work on it,
* and the lack of a bridge from 64 bit felt like a kick in the teeth. as you say: the move was needed, but the support for developers fell short.I love NVDA and will champion it, but I do wonder about the direction and decisionmaking sometimes.
@cachondo @fastfinge None of it is on point, and if he'd bothered taking the time to actually ask us any of the questions up front, we would happily have cleared up any confusion.
-
@cachondo @fastfinge None of it is on point, and if he'd bothered taking the time to actually ask us any of the questions up front, we would happily have cleared up any confusion.
-
@fastfinge @cachondo The fact that we have been MORE open & willing to discussin things on here than basically any other company (please, point me to a thread in which ANY company got more involved on ANY topic? I'm waiting....) All we asked was that where you believe something is a security vulnerability, you disclose that privately in the first instance. That's all, nothing more sinister. Otherwise, I really don't think you can make any kind of argument that we don't discuss things publically.
-
@fastfinge @cachondo The fact that we have been MORE open & willing to discussin things on here than basically any other company (please, point me to a thread in which ANY company got more involved on ANY topic? I'm waiting....) All we asked was that where you believe something is a security vulnerability, you disclose that privately in the first instance. That's all, nothing more sinister. Otherwise, I really don't think you can make any kind of argument that we don't discuss things publically.
-
@fastfinge No one said that. It's an open source project, discussion happens on the issue tracker and/or mailing list. Or you can ask them here. You know this. Should NVDA have a full time public relations person to handle all concerns? Who pays for that? What priorities suffer?
Your piece seems somewhat premised on the idea that you must trust NVAccess in an informational vacuum. I don't think that's true at all. You could just... ask them why they did XYZ. If that answer isn't satisfactory, okay, the discussion has moved forward.
-
@fastfinge @cachondo IN your article, you yourself open with "But I'm probably missing context, so I'll just have to trust that NVAccess knows things I don't." - hence, why would you not reach out to us first to find out WHY we did things a certain way?
-
@fastfinge No one said that. It's an open source project, discussion happens on the issue tracker and/or mailing list. Or you can ask them here. You know this. Should NVDA have a full time public relations person to handle all concerns? Who pays for that? What priorities suffer?
Your piece seems somewhat premised on the idea that you must trust NVAccess in an informational vacuum. I don't think that's true at all. You could just... ask them why they did XYZ. If that answer isn't satisfactory, okay, the discussion has moved forward.
@prism @fastfinge @cachondo Thank you. And yes, I have spent the last hour or so on this thread, and I haven't even got to half the article yet. So this HAS cost the organisation my time in doing this, when I suspect most of it could have been resolved just by asking a couple of questions first. And just to be clear, asking questions is perfectly fine. It's where they are done as public accusations of poor behaviour without first having obtained the facts that it gets frustrating
-
@fastfinge No one said that. It's an open source project, discussion happens on the issue tracker and/or mailing list. Or you can ask them here. You know this. Should NVDA have a full time public relations person to handle all concerns? Who pays for that? What priorities suffer?
Your piece seems somewhat premised on the idea that you must trust NVAccess in an informational vacuum. I don't think that's true at all. You could just... ask them why they did XYZ. If that answer isn't satisfactory, okay, the discussion has moved forward.
-
@fastfinge So start them. If you want to answer questions, in addition to asking them.
@cachondo @NVAccess -
@fastfinge So start them. If you want to answer questions, in addition to asking them.
@cachondo @NVAccess@prism @cachondo @NVAccess Seems a bit late to discuss decisions that were already made…somewhere…by someone. Compare to the Linux kernel mailing list. If I want to know what was decided, who decided it, why they decided it, when and where, all discussion is right there. NVDA also operated this way up until the last couple years. When Michael or Jamie decided anything, the reasoning was all in public. Even if I didn’t like it, the chain of thought that got them there was fully visible. -
@prism @fastfinge @cachondo Thank you. And yes, I have spent the last hour or so on this thread, and I haven't even got to half the article yet. So this HAS cost the organisation my time in doing this, when I suspect most of it could have been resolved just by asking a couple of questions first. And just to be clear, asking questions is perfectly fine. It's where they are done as public accusations of poor behaviour without first having obtained the facts that it gets frustrating
@NVAccess @prism @cachondo And that can only happen when the facts aren’t already public. For an open source foundation, that is a problem in and of itself. However, I apologize for wasting your time. In future, I’ll be sure to waste just as much of your time asking questions that should have had public answers when the pull requests were first opened. -
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess Seems a bit late to discuss decisions that were already made…somewhere…by someone. Compare to the Linux kernel mailing list. If I want to know what was decided, who decided it, why they decided it, when and where, all discussion is right there. NVDA also operated this way up until the last couple years. When Michael or Jamie decided anything, the reasoning was all in public. Even if I didn’t like it, the chain of thought that got them there was fully visible.
@fastfinge @cachondo @prism As Drew suggested, what do you want to know? I'm only halfway through your article and most of it is "I don't like this feature, it shouldn't have taken developer time" when, if you'd asked, we could have told you that things like Remote Access, Image Description, Magnifier, etc you complain about - were all done by others and only overseen by us
