@Jage This repo by @tayarndt @JeffBishop is quite big and good
Feel free to contribute.
https://github.com/Community-Access/accessibility-agents
kaveinthran@mastodon.stickbear.me
Posts
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So is someone maintaining a Github or a resource that covers the various AI coding agents from an accessibility perspective, suggested config values, tips, etc -
New Year, new Wikipedia list.@jessamyn Amazing. I've been looking at your Wikipedia list, and it was very great. I have a question if you don't mind. And you can find answers for me in your free time if you have some left.
Do you know of any books that are written about Wikipedia or GLAM? I'm also looking for essays and reference articles about Wikipedia outside the Wikipedia universe, if you know what I mean. Do you know of any blogs of Wikipedians that are writing regularly, and any reference or pointers on the inner workings of Wikipedia or on how to edit Wikipedia? Some things like that.
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New Year, new Wikipedia list.@jessamyn Wow, what book is that?
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let's see how some people sell their tutorials for NVDA imagine you are a newly Blind person that need audio guided demonstration and you want to buy this, I'll stop here and let you read the rest.@dhamlinmusic Can you explain further?
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let's see how some people sell their tutorials for NVDA imagine you are a newly Blind person that need audio guided demonstration and you want to buy this, I'll stop here and let you read the rest.let's see how some people sell their tutorials for NVDA
imagine you are a newly Blind person that need audio guided demonstration and you want to buy this, I'll stop here and let you read the rest.Accessible Learning Lounge — NVDA Audio Lessons (by Charmaine)
- How to Download and Install NVDA onto your PC without sight — CAD$15
- Getting Started with NVDA (for beginners) on Windows — CAD$15
- Basics of moving around PC, manage files/folders, and Taskbar with NVDA — CAD$25
- Basics of Writing, Reading, Saving, and Editing documents in NVDA — CAD$20
- Basics of How to Use the Review Cursor in NVDA — CAD$30
- Selecting, Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Text with NVDA — CAD$15
- How to use the Review Cursor in NVDA at an advanced level — CAD$25
- Style and format documents in Microsoft Word with NVDA (Advanced) — CAD$40
- Basics of Browsing the Web with NVDA for Windows — CAD$30
- Learning to Read Tables, and Access the User Guide in NVDA — CAD$15
- Filling Forms on the Web (Edge, Chrome, or any browser with NVDA) — CAD$36
- Choosing preferred voice, setting up specific profiles in NVDA — CAD$25
- Quick Tour of the NVDA Menu + Deep Dive into Settings — CAD$15
- How to Use the Add-on Store in NVDA for Windows — CAD$25
- Getting Started with Using Google Chrome (NVDA for Windows) — CAD$30
- Accessing Browsing History, and Private Browsing in Google Chrome with NVDA — CAD$12
- Managing Bookmarks in Google Chrome with NVDA — CAD$25
- Getting Started with Using Microsoft Edge on NVDA — CAD$20
- Find, search, use dropdown menus, or access browsing history in Edge (NVDA) — CAD$30
- Getting Started with Using Outlook on NVDA — CAD$30
- Handling messages, navigating folders, recovering deleted messages (Outlook + NVDA) — CAD$30
- Working with attachments, sending links, saving drafts in Outlook (NVDA) — CAD$36
- Mini Lesson: search, sort, and flag emails in Outlook with NVDA — CAD$36
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from the lovely, visionary, @joslee Community proposal: celebrating, reflecting, and envisioning NVDA's past, present, and future together as a community throughout 2026Joseph Lee12/23/25from the lovely, visionary, @joslee
Community proposal: celebrating, reflecting, and envisioning NVDA's past, present, and future together as a community throughout 2026
Joseph Lee
12/23/25Hello add-ons community,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for folks celebrating them.
Please circulate the following community proposal throughout the NVDA community (if you want, please do translate them into your languages). While I will be offline from the community for majority of the time in 2026, I will do my best to offer advice in terms of event planning:
Proposal: community events to celebrate, reflect, and envision NVDA’s past, present, and future throughout 2026 (NVDA’s twentieth anniversary):
Hello NVDA community,
Hope all of you are doing well and staying safe and healthy.
In a few days we will usher into year 2026. The upcoming year is special for the NVDA community: it is NVDA’s twentieth anniversary, and the NVDA community should come together to mark this occasion by celebrating, reflecting, and envisioning NVDA’s past, present, and future.
Background: in April 2006, an early version of NonVisual Desktop Access was released to the world. In the midst of competition between several commercial (and free) screen readers for Microsoft Windows, NVDA made a mark by being an open-source, free screen reader made by the blind for the blind. For the next twenty years, NVDA and NV Access, the nonprofit in charge of developing NVDA, became a recognized force in the access technology landscape, with numerous awards, sponsorships, and a community of people driving its growth and adoption, including being adopted as a primary screen reader for an upcoming braille-centric computing hardware.
In 2016, I and several NVDA community members organized NVDACon, a weekend of fun and reflection on NVDA’s ten years of service and impact. Starting out as a small screen reader targeting Windows XP in 2006, NVDA became a centerpiece of a community dedicated to equal access to technology ten years later. Not only the screen reader itself became an example of community involvement, things around it such as add-ons, localization, tutorials, and others strengthened NVDA’s ecosystem and its message that people should not have to pay extra to access information anywhere. The 2016 event was global in scale and featured talks from members across countries, languages, and backgrounds, including a keynote from NV Access discussing their reflection and vision for NVDA for years to come.
So, as we approach the twentieth anniversary of NVDA, let us work together as a community to organize events throughout the year celebrating, reflecting, and envisioning NVDA’s past, present, and future. The events can include workshops on submitting bug reports and feature suggestions, a showcase of community add-ons and their development, a collection of video testimonials from community members, in-person or online gathering of community members organized by local communities or on a more global scale, or something creative and memorable. Ideally, the events should happen throughout the year, with some of the memorable ones happening to coincide with NVDA’s twentieth anniversary in April 2026. Or, if we want, let us try resurrecting international NVDACon and make it more modern such as webinars over Zoom and other more modern (and accessible) possibilities.
While many events might be organized at the level of local communities by country or language, I think we should aim to have at least one global scale event in 2026 to celebrate NVDA’s impact in the past, reflect on NVDA’s present strengths and challenges, and collectively envision what NVDA will be for the next five years or so. While I may not be able to coordinate various events including the global event I envision happening later in 2026, I will be available should any NVDA community seek advice on event planning and organization.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Joseph
Joseph S. Lee, M.A.
PhD student and instructor of record (communication), University of Colorado Boulder
Certified NVDA Expert, 2025
Member, NVDA Advisory Group
Founder and initial event planner, NVDA Users and Developers Conference (NVDACon), 2014 to 2016
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from @NVAccess about the add-on store "Hi everyone,@NVAccess Clarification about the sandbox for Add-ons
Sean Budd (NV Access)
The new runtime will be optional. We have no plans to restrict the current add-on system, this is to just give NVDA users and add-on developers the option for a more stable and trustworthy add-on system. As an open source project, and as per our product vision NVDA will always be freely modifiable, including insecure, custom add-ons. Our license prevents us from ever becoming closed source.Add-ons have never been manually approved or vetted in detail by NV Access.
Based on our performance testing, the secure addon runtime has no noticeable negative performance impacts. The new runtime will have stable API, meaning less long time maintenance for addon developers. While anything has the potential for vulnerabilities, as usual, we will be responsive in fixing any found exploits in the new runtime. however given our sandboxing methods it will be much more difficult to create a malicious addon than the current add-on system. We expect the new runtime to be secure, fast and trustworthy.
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from @NVAccess about the add-on store "Hi everyone,from @NVAccess about the add-on store
"Hi everyone,We've had some questions lately around responsibility for the quality and safety of add-ons in the NVDA add-on store, so we wanted to address that:
What is NV Access’s responsibility for the quality and safety of add-ons in the store?
This is an important question, and among some people there seems to be a significant misunderstanding about the role of the Add-on Store. The accusation that we failed to properly vet an add-on is based on a mistaken premise of what the store is for. The Add-on Store is a repository for community-created content, not a curated collection of NV Access-certified software. Our philosophy is similar to the classic Unix approach: we don't prevent people from doing potentially stupid things, because that would also prevent them from doing clever things. This is similar to the approach taken by other add-on stores, including browsers such as the Chrome and Firefox add-on stores and platforms such as the Windows and Android app stores.
To act as a Quality Control gatekeeper for every add-on, by testing every feature and judging its code quality, would be a massive overreach of developer freedom. Ironically, that is precisely the very kind of top-down control we have recently been accused of.
Like those previously mentioned add-on stores, we do perform automated security checks on all submissions. This includes static code analysis and running submissions through VirusTotal to screen for known malware. To date, no known malicious add-ons have been submitted to the store. The recent add-on that sparked discussion was simply broken and poorly coded.
As we state clearly in our documentation and in warnings within NVDA itself, add-ons from the store are used at your own risk. The responsibility for ensuring an add-on works correctly and comes from a trustworthy author ultimately lies with the user who chooses to install it.
While we stand by the principle of developer freedom, we also recognise that the current model is not ideal for user security in the long term. That is precisely why we have been working for some time on a major engineering effort: to create a secure add-on runtime. This is a complex, long-term project that will fundamentally change how add-ons interact with NVDA, allowing them to run in a more isolated and secure environment. This will provide a much stronger safety net for users without requiring us to manually vet the quality of every single community creation."
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For those who wants to give NVDA a second look, NVDA Coach add-on may be very usefulFor those who wants to give NVDA a second look, NVDA Coach add-on may be very useful
Introduction to NVDA Coach
I'd like to share a free NVDA add-on that I think would help power Jaws users like me to get more familiar with NvDA. It is just recently released by a chap named tony gebhard and its called NVDA Coach, an interactive, in-screen-reader training tool designed to help new users learn NVDA through hands-on guided lessons, without ever leaving the screen reader environment.
I would say it's liken to the built-in voiceover tutorial that we are familiar in the iOS system.
The recent access on podcast episode #66; NVDA in the Past, Present, and Future has invited a lot of curiosity from new users and even seasoned jaws users that want to give NVDA another look.
Anyone that's starting out from that route may want to try this add-on alongside not so beginner friendly user guide and the reasonably priced Basic Training ebook by NVAccess.
As a side note, an NVDA-like add-on store is much needed in the jaws ecosystem. That would be the first place new people would want to go to find cool stuff.What is NVDA Coach?
NVDA Coach walks students through real NVDA commands step by step, with immediate feedback as they practice each gesture. No need to switch between a tutorial document and NVDA — the coaching happens right inside NVDA itself.
What's Included ? 34 Lessons Across Five Chapters, among them are
- Getting Started (navigation, reading, speech control, and more)
- Browse Mode (virtual cursor, links, headings, the Elements List, and a live practice page)
How to activate it? Press NVDA + Shift + C to open the lesson picker at any time.
The latest version as of now is NVDA Coach v1.1.0.
What's New in here, among others,
Lesson Content
- All steps are now labeled [NVDA command] or [Universal shortcut] so you know which is which
- All lessons include "why" framing (sighted equivalent context)
- New chapter: Object Navigation — 6 lessons
- New chapter: Customizing NVDA — 2 lessons (keyboard layout, speech settings)
- Browse Mode lesson 9: Find Text on a Page (NVDA+Ctrl+F)
- Browse Mode lesson 10: Toggle Single-Letter Navigation (NVDA+Shift+Space)
Hotkey Note
NVDA+Shift+C can be remapped via NVDA menu > Preferences > Input Gestures > NVDA CoachMany people are trying this add-on and the interest is brewing. Thanks to Joseph, Gene, and Darrell Hilliker for the feedback that shaped this release.
Download the add-on
Source code & documentationAccording to the Author, It will soon be available in the official NvDA add-on store, last I check its already submited for review.
This add-on was built with AT instructors, orientation and mobility specialists, and self-directed learners in mind. Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions are always welcome [[https://github.com/tonygeb23/nvdaCoach-/](via GitHub).
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For anyone interested in The Lord of the Rings, there is an amazing audiobook with music, sound effects, different voices for the characters, etc, all done by one person.@emassey0135 There are stuff like this for Harry Potter too, both books by Stephen Fry and Jim Dale are enhanced with music and sound effects.
Would you willing to host them if I can send you? The creators are giving it for free, or I can give you the creators username for you to get it from them and host it for our Blind community -
Just tried to coach a friend on the use of some basic tasks in the Firefox Developer Tools.@marco Definitely sad, have you tried looking at chrome?
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Blind folks, what would make you want to use, or try out, Linux?@pixelate Audio demos of some cool applications
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Another amazing thing about Emacs.@pixelate Wow, Emacs really sounds cool. I really love to hear an audio demonstration of how Emacs and Emacs speak work side by side. Do you know of any recordings that is already here?
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NVDA 2026.1 Beta 6 is now available!@NVAccess Love today's in-process issue. Perhaps, it would encourage more people to submit their add-on to the store for discoverability. nvda
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Full of Keyboard Commands, So Many of Them, and It Breaks My heart@menelion I am quite positive that you have much more experience and perhaps some criticisms to point out, I am always for counterpoints and what I perhaps got wrong.
I have missed out many strong #NVDA add-ons in my process of writing this, and @joslee graciously provide much needed counterpoints and valid context in the NVDA add-on mailing list.
I am reproducing parts here.- Context-sensitive help: this is partly implemented in Control Usage Assistant add-on.
- One-handed object navigation: ObjPad is designed specifically with this scenario in mind.
- Hotspot clicker: Golden Cursor is the closest equivalent.
The issue to consider is that in order for ad-dons to improve their keyboard commands structure, NVDA Core must receive upgrades in keyboard assignment space. A key request for years has been ease of defining layer commands in NVDA itself, and without that, layer commands that can bring some of what’s being asked cannot be implemented easily.
@jcsteh @Scott @cachondo @josh @matt @pneumasolutions @hartgenconsult @pixelate @doubletap @brian_hartgen @Tamasg @ppatel @tspivey
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Full of Keyboard Commands, So Many of Them, and It Breaks My heartFull of Keyboard Commands, So Many of Them, and It Breaks My heart
In the screen-reading space, we have come a long way in information representation. We know earcons; we are good at implementing various voice profiles and sound profiles for events and attributes. But it's worrying me a bit that we may be going backwards, and I don't just mean navigational systems, I mean how features reach us in general. Complexity is not the problem. The missing alternatives for people who type with one hand, forget easily, or just get tired, that's what's eating at me.
And before this gets written off as a niche concern: we forget commands, we have impaired fingers, we have tremors, we get tired reaching for function keys. It's frustrating to remember while sighted folks can just visualise and click. This isn't a small thing, and the worst part is that we are doing it to ourselves. Where We Came From
The evergreen works from folks who developed blind games were amazing, mostly one-handed friendly, no multiple modifiers, everything achievable with arrows and Tab, and occasionally some alphabets. Remember Chillingham, Grisly Grudge, Hunter, Blast Bay Games, Cast Away, etc.?
Now sure, those were simpler tools for simpler tasks, and today's stuff does a lot more, I get that. But more capability doesn't have to mean more memorisation. Our own history already shows this.
Even Doug Lee's scripts have such implementations, where many alternative commands are given for a single functionality: the default with Alt or JAWS Key modifier, the layer command, and inside the layer command, you can use Tab and Enter to activate the similar command. In Skype or Discord, you can read all chat messages just by activating the layer and using the Up, Down, Home, and End keys. The best help system in those scripts is that you just use Tab and Shift+Tab to cycle through commands, and that way you don't have to remember hundreds of commands. We can then press Enter on a command to execute it. It's not just about exploring the command; the execution itself is assigned with one hand in mind.
So here is my question for everything: can a new user find and do any function, one-handed, without memorising anything first? That's the bar. If the answer is no, someone has some rethinking to do. JAWS: The Good and the Honest Gaps
JAWS hotkey help is another sleek invention. The Insert+H help system badly needs an emulation here in the accessibility space, a webpage linear structure where all the commands are just links to be clicked on.
The JAWS command search, despite its zen-mode loading time, is another great design decision that has changed people's lives. You just press Insert+Space and J, then type what you want to do in keywords, read the commands, and even press Enter to perform them. The Insert+F1 "context-sensitive help," the tutor messages, and keyboard voice always save people time by being brief and neatly helpful. Context-sensitive help is the most lacking concept in the NVDA screen reader.
The JAWS and Touch Cursor is a complex interface traversed with just arrows. The Home Row mode utility allows developers to explore Windows and its hierarchy with arrows and occasional alphabets. With all its complexity, the Settings Centre just requires you to search, press Space, then press Escape, and Space again to save. One-hand commands, to and fro.
JAWS also comes with an "Insert Key Mode", a sticky key concept. The Insert key functions as a sticky key: any key pressed immediately after pressing Insert is treated as if it were pressed in combination with it. The recent Table Layer commands have simplified table navigation a lot, and you just use the arrow keys to traverse tables. Doug Lee extended this implementation to list views through his ListTbl, a JAWS script for navigating ListView controls with table navigation commands.
Obviously, there is bad design in JAWS too. To know the time and date, you need to press Insert+F12. Wow, that's too remote. I changed mine to Ctrl+Shift+X. Adding to that, you need to go to farther places to modify your keyboard commands, which is just a pain for new users who struggle with their hands and fingers. NVDA is even further behind and has a lot more to figure out with its Input Gestures system. With JAWS, you can at least find a function by its assigned hotkey and change it; I don't think you can do that just yet with NVDA.
When using the HotSpotClicker scripts by Jim Snowbarger, I am amazed with the implementation of adding a hotkey to a hotspot set, in which a generous timer with a keyboard trap is initiated, and you press the key you want the hotspot to record. This concept should be further expanded into a proper standard: an easy mode to search or press the command you want to change, then press the new command, then verify and save. One hand, from start to finish. That shouldn't be too hard to build, honestly.
Going back to my keyboard gripe, don't let me get started with the gazillions of Braille display commands in JAWS. That's beyond my expertise, but I have heard plenty of stories, and it's not beginner-friendly, to put it simply. These things are full of life. From these creations, we can both learn a tonne and disregard problematic practices. Do JAWS or NVDA have a one-handed keyboard layout mode? If not, well, someone has something to build. Mainstream Lessons: Reaper DAW
In the mainstream space, the Reaper Audio DAW is an exemplary software that many others should look at. Yes, it has many commands, and it's further complicated by the ReaPack and OSARA implementations. @jcsteh and @Scott would be a testament to that. Reaper has a design process where every possible function can be learned or performed in multiple ways: by searching, by adding your own commands, or by using the keyboard tutorial mode to learn them first. The complexity is real, but so is the way out of it, and that's the whole point. I am not a full-fledged Reaper user, so excuse me for my oversimplifications. Scripts That Got It Right
There are other JAWS scripts from which we can learn a tonne of inclusive human design concepts. What they all have in common is what I was just talking about, you can find anything without knowing it first.
Take the JFW Technical Scripts by Jamie Teh, no keyboard commands to memorise. It's just Ctrl+Shift+J, that's all. All other functions are browsable in a virtual viewer within subpages and sections separated by headings.
Same for the Jawter script, created by @cachondo, which later inspired many other blind programs like Qwitter and TWBlue by @josh. The design is two modifiers with one hand; the other hand presses one key at most, mostly arrows, or any alphabet. In Qwitter and other programs, there is even a key describer mode to familiarise yourself with the commands, and a sticky mode to keep the Alt+Win key active while you use alphabets and arrows to navigate Twitter.
Jamal Mazrui is very much an icon in implementing keyboard-first tools. In every one of his tools, you have Alt+F10 or Alt+Shift+F10 to navigate the menus, and admittedly, those may require two hands. Inside these menus, every item is given a keyboard command, and you can use first-letter navigation to reach them.
There are surely equally complicated things in there that we may choose to refine. Work done by @matt with earlier Serotek and now @pneumasolutions is many, many times commendable. Remember how you used to navigate the SAMNetwork or DocuScan Plus? Even with the RIM software, navigation is just by Tab and Shift+Tab, or headings and links, simple as that. If you want, you can remember keyboard commands that have only a modifier with an alphabet, or Alt with an alphabet.
The System Access screenReader also comes with many great additions like that. The menu structure is webpage-like, and to go to each menu you just press one key, if I am not mistaken. It's fast, mindless.
I have not used GWMicro's Window-Eyes screen reader so deeply, but I am certain that the script and app developers there have created many more patterns that we can document, emulate, and equally follow. I am also sure that Vim, Emacs, and other open-source Linux implementations that are keyboard-driven have more ideas waiting to be implemented. Aliases? Batch commands? Macros? The Complexity Creep Problem
Nowadays, yes, we have more accessible tools, but also more keyboard commands to remember, without proper recourse or remedy for one-handed people or those with less cognitive reserve. Look at Google Suite, Office ribbons, so many layers of taxing keys with blatant disregard for design and simplicity, and loads of gymnastics we have to perform. Yes, for Google Suite there is Alt+Slash, and for Office there is Alt+Q, but imagine how much it can be simplified by adding alternatives that allow for more visualisation and less remembering.
This phenomena of mindless keyboard commands is creeping into JAWS scripts and NVDA add-ons as well. I am going to point some fingers at great people I have very much respect for. They have great product ideas and design that are benefiting lots of Blind people, and I am going to traverse their work and point out the good and the bits they can think about more. I am not here to tear down anyone's work or generosity, I just think there is a next step here.
@hartgenconsult is a champion in keyboard tool-making, from JTools all the way to Leasy. Something we should learn here is that the JTools/Leasy Help key (H) is a central place where all keyboard commands with categories are shown and can be activated by pressing Enter, a huge design gesture with simplicity in mind. And it's also context-sensitive, if I have this right. That's what I keep talking about, right there.
Despite the beautiful implementation, there are things that can be further studied. I am sure I am strawmanning his hard work here, but what I find is it's often hard to remember layers upon layers of keyboard commands. Let's take the Leasy clip operations, which may have been inspired by the HJClip days, made by an English developer whose name escapes me, and later further tweaked by Getinra. Both in HJClip and Leasy, it's simply too many commands, at least for me, to perform the myriad, complex keyboard operations.
In JTools, all clips are located on the function keys, honestly that's too much. In Leasy, it has certainly improved; I believe it's all on the number keys now.
My concrete suggestion here is to look at clipboard buffers, which are even older than HJClip, originating from the Vim system. @pixelate may enlighten me on whether Linux has this system, but Doug Lee created a similar buffer system in his BX key, and his approach is the model worth following. You can think of it as many clipboards. You trigger the command, say left bracket, and assign a text to an alphabet (say, S), then to paste it, you double-press S. You just add one modifier to that S to copy to clipboard, append, or clear that buffer. One hand, one simple mental model, and you have as many clipboards as you need.
Below, I am reproducing his clipboard buffer method from the BX documentation:
Text Management -- Commands for cutting, copying, pasting, and combining text blocks, and for holding blocks of text in up to 26 buffers named by single letters. This system was inspired by the buffer system in the "Vi" text editor found under Linux and other similar operating systems. The NVDA Add-On Renaissance
In the NVDA add-on ecosystem, it's a renaissance time. Add-ons are flourishing, and at the same time, people have to remember more. These two things don't have to come together, and some add-ons are already showing that.
One of them is the Instant Access add-on by Kamal Yasir. Thanks to @doubletap for introducing it to the world. The concept is simple: you pick a file, web shortcut, or folder, assign it to an alphabet, and launch it with a layer. It's fast, one-handed, and it works. The concept may be inspired by @brian_hartgen's JTools and Leasy, further refined into a buffer concept. I think new add-ons should be looking here for inspiration.
The Markdown Navigator add-on simply invents a layer to make Markdown documents browsable, making everything familiar by triggering the browse mode concept we are all so used to. You already know how to use it, and that's the whole point.
Other developers, still early in their work, are also trying their best to simplify their add-on designs. @Tamasg's TGSpeechbox is a revolution in the Blind TTS community. What could be improved further, and I really want this add-on to do well, is to make the huge settings panel with help context optionally enabled. Say, if someone checks a box to enable help, every arrow to a setting under the settings panel would briefly speak what it is. The huge settings panel would be further accessible if an item-chooser or Reaper Command Center-like approach were implemented, so people can type a phrase or a few letters to narrow the options. That one thing would make a tonne of difference, I think.
@ppatel's Terminal Access is another long-awaited terminal accessibility enhancement for NVDA. He does not stop there. Knowing that blind people deal with subpar experiences in many terminals, he painstakingly created profiles for many popular ones. Kudos to his many contributions, and to @tspivey for being a great backend inspiration for his work. The add-on quickly grew in complexity, and a menu-like or tab-like structure is much needed to navigate the huge layer commands, so people can zip through various functions using arrows, Tab, and so on. The foundation is solid, what's still missing is the discoverability layer. Closing Thoughts
I want to end here by saying that we often hold the strong impression that keyboard-only interfaces are flawless, and that our hands will not defeat us. But it's sad that often, when a piece of Blind tooling gets more complex, developers simply pile on more and more commands without paying enough attention to engineer them to be compatible with Blind people of many kinds.
I am not asking for less powerful tools. I want tools where you can find any function by browsing or searching, where one key gets you in and arrows get you around, and where memorisation is a choice rather than a requirement. We have done this before. Doug Lee did it. Jawter did it. Reaper does it. The knowledge is already in our community.
Generally, our difficulties compound as we get older. We forget commands, we have impaired fingers, we have tremors, we do feel tired reaching for the function keys. These are not rare cases, this is where most of us end up. Most importantly, it's frustrating to remember while sighted folks can just visualise and click. In those days, Blind software was designed with visualisation and muscle memory baked in. Now, we are losing our grip on that inherent creativity, more and more complexity, without reverence for the simplicity we know and love.
I think we can do better than this for each other.
#accessibility #jaws #screenReader #Blind #linux #opensource #reaper #daw #NVDA #keyboard #disability #web #design #ui #a11y #scripts
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This is a very important #accessibility gap that's not very much addressed in the #blind community.This is a very important #accessibility gap that's not very much addressed in the #blind community. To start, we definitely need a one-handed input mode or keyboard layout in the #NVDA screen reader to account for people who are blind that can only use one hand. I guess JAWS has a sticky insert mode, but not a full-fleshed one-handed keyboard layout. @NVAccess https://mstdn.social/@brandtsteenkamp/113890778425254743