NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2025.1 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version. This release introduces NVDA Remote Access, provides speech, braille, OCR & Office improvements, Native selection in Chrome & edge

Full info & Download: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1/

"By passing on my knowledge of using NVDA to new users of the NVDA screen reader, my aim was to help people in the same boat as me; as well as sighted people in the community to learn ways that they could help us out in the #community."

Like NV Access, Gene recognises the importance of #empowering people to identify needed change, and enact it! Full #interview with Gene at: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/gene_empowers_nz/

In-Process is out, featuring the latest on NVDA 2025.1, the recent NV Access strategy session, and Should you use Screen Layout? (H/T to @jscholes for your recent poll)

Check it all out here: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/in-process-12th-june-2025/

About a month ago, I had the privilege of presenting #FreeBSD at the Institute for the Blind in Milan, during an event held in connection with #GAAD (Global Accessibility Awareness Day). It was a profoundly meaningful experience that deepened my commitment to digital accessibility and the development of assistive technologies.

I'm excited to share that the #Accessibility Handbook, focused on vision-related assistive technologies in FreeBSD, is nearly complete. This task has been made possible thanks to the tireless dedication of FreeBSD community volunteers and the support of the @FreeBSDFoundation for new projects and documentation centered on visual accessibility.

It has been an incredible two years since NV Access founders Mick Curran & Jamie Teh featured on Australian Story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-05/mick-curran-jamie-teh-changing-lives-of-the-blind-with-nvda/101768788

The impact NVDA has for blind people around the world has only grown & the need is as great now as ever!

You can watch the Audio Description enabled version of Australian Story: https://youtu.be/3i7gkN-1sAI

Regular version: https://youtu.be/jwHbXh3WzSw

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

Hoping those familiar with #LaTeX can give me some advice here. I've started using it to create my assignments for school. I'm not writing technical papers yet, but I find using LaTeX with #Zotero in #VSCode more #accessible with a #ScreenReader than most other setups I've tried.
Since my discussion posts have to follow #APA style, I’m using LaTeX for those as well as full papers. That part is going well—but I’m running into trouble when I need to actually post what I’ve written.
My school uses Brightspace, which allows discussion posts in either rich text or #HTML. I have #Pandoc installed, so I tried converting my LaTeX source to HTML and pasting the code. But Pandoc didn’t include my references section in the output.
I also tried copying from the PDF, but that stripped all formatting.
Does anyone know how I can get a clean HTML version of my work—with references included—that I can paste into Brightspace?
Here’s the command I’ve been using:
pandoc main.tex \
--bibliography=references. Bib \
--csl=apa.csl \
--standalone \
-o main.html
It creates the HTML file, but the references section is missing.
Any tips?
#Accessibility #AssistiveTech #Pandoc #APAstyle #Brightspace #EdTech #AcademicWriting #InclusiveTech #BlindTech #HigherEd #CitationTools #OpenSource #WritingWorkflow

So here’s one of those keyboard shortcuts I probably should have known about already after over 10 years of using #JAWS, but didn’t! When I press Alt+Windows+S, JAWS announces “meeting status unavailable”. This appears to be a global shortcut and doesn’t seem to change no matter what I do from my (admittedly very brief) testing. FS Companion says that the keystroke is used to toggle between the local machine and the remote machine in a tandem session, which is incorrect. Anyone know what this does? I’m also using #Leasey if that makes a difference. #BlindTech #ScreenReader @freedomscientific

I’ve published Part 3 of “I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back.”

This one’s about the so-called universal interface: the console. The raw, non-GUI, text-mode TTY. The place where sighted Linux users fall back when the desktop breaks, and where blind users are supposed to do the same. Except — we can’t. Not reliably. Not safely. Not without building the entire stack ourselves.

This post covers Speakup, BRLTTY, Fenrir, and the audio subsystem hell that makes screen reading in the console a game of chance. It dives into why session-locked audio breaks espeakup, why BRLTTY fails silently and eats USB ports, why the console can be a full environment — and why it’s still unusable out of the box. And yes, it calls out the fact that if you’re deafblind, and BRLTTY doesn’t start, you’re just locked out of the machine entirely. No speech. No visuals. Just a dead black box.

There are workarounds. Scripts. Hacks. Weird client.conf magic that you run once as root, once as a user, and pray to PipeWire that it sticks. Some of this I learned from a reader of post 1. None of it is documented. None of it is standard. And none of it should be required.

This is a long one. Technical, and very real. Because the console should be the one place Linux accessibility never breaks. And it’s the one place that’s been left to rot.

Link to the post: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-3-speakup-brltty-and-the-forgotten-infrastructure-of-console-access/

I have a low-vision student who is learning to code JavaScript. She needs a better code editor to work with, and/or some plugins to make it work better with her screen readers. What do the accessible developers recommend? **#accessibility** **#screenreader #javascript**

Hey everyone,
I’m looking for an accessible Reddit app for Mac that works well with VoiceOver. What do you suggest? I’d love to hear what’s working for you.

Excited to share Thorsten-Voice's YouTube channel!

Thorsten presents innovative TTS solutions and a variety of voice technologies, making it an excellent starting point for anyone interested in open-source text-to-speech. Whether you're a developer, accessibility advocate, or tech enthusiast, his channel offers valuable insights and resources. Don't miss out on this fantastic content!

follow hem here: @thorstenvoice
or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThorstenMueller YouTube channel!

@grammargirl I would love to see spelling reform, I think social media is already doing this for us. Spelling anarchy!
Due wot uuuuu wahnt, iif peepel uhndrrstahnd mayyybee weee can beet sense or ship ohn sentral eyes’d platphorms. I wonder how challenging it is to understand with a #screenreader tho?

It is bewildering to me how many #blind people share content that they've copied from another source without fixing up issues with #screenReader readability. The latest example is an email starting with 13 lines—for NVDA and Chrome at least—of silent unicode characters at the beginning.

Actually, it's confusing why so many blind people copy and republish content from other sources rather than linking to the original, but that's a separate conversation.

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!

This Global Accessibility Awareness Day we'd like to shout out to our translators! NVDA has been translated into over 55 languages to provide access to technology for blind and vision impaired people around the world. Recently we spoke with Harun in Türkiye, who shared how access, in his own language, has helped him: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/harun-fast-local-in-turkey/