NVDA has been translated into fifty-five languages and is used in one-hundred and seventy-five different countries. Why do I use NVDA and recommend it to my MS Windows using clients? Well, it is open source, fast, powerful, easy to install, supports a wide variety of languages, can be run as a portable application, has a large user base, and there is a regular release cycle for new versions. You can download the latest release of NVDA from the NVAccess website. Fast forward to 2021 and JAWS comes in with 53.7% with NVDA at 30.7%. NVDA, then a relatively new open source screen reader for Windows came in at just 8%. It is a commercial product for Microsoft Windows, and the long-time market leader. In the first survey, the most common screen reader used was JAWS at 74%. The WebAIM screen reader user surveys began in 2009 and ran to 2021. Welcome to the communityĮxplore open source resources How to use the NVDA screen reader.NVDA can also be installed on a Windows virtual machine, just be aware that keyboard shortcuts may need to be remapped and an audio driver may require special configuration. If you’re looking to test with NVDA, but are on a Mac or running Linux, Assistiv Labs provides remote access. If you’re on a Windows PC, you can download NVDA for free and run the installer, which provides both audio and visual feedback. The modern Windows accessibility API, UIA, is supported as well as legacy MSAA and IA2. It also supports visible focus highlighting for the virtual cursor and document focus. The NVDA speech viewer provides a running log for testers who need captions and is also useful for bug reports (caveat: be careful relying on speech viewers). JAWS + Chrome will announce the label when the input is focused, which can create a false impression that the HTML is bug free. However, some screen readers will make an educated guess that the label was meant for the input in the interest of creating a better user experience.

Because the is missing a for='id-of-input' attribute, when the input is focused with NVDA the 'What's your favorite animal?' label is not announced, forcing the user to guess at the input’s purpose. It’s been called “the most bang for your buck” by accessibility consultancies because it tends to uncover 90% of screen reader compatibility issues on its own.įor example, consider a common HTML bug where an is missing a label or accessible name: What's your favorite animal?.

When evaluating the accessibility of a website or app via manual testing, NVDA is an extremely popular choice.

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