NVDA Readme file

An open-source (and free) Screen Reader for the Windows Operating System.

Created by Michael Curran, with help from James Teh and others.

NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is an open-source screen reader for the Windows Operating System, enabling blind and vision impaired people to use their computers for no more cost than that of the computer and Operating System itself. Started in April 2006, it has grown to become quite usable as a day-to-day screen reader, enabling the user to do most tasks they would need to. It is not as stable or as bug-free as some of the commercial screen readers. But since December 2006 the creator of NVDA has been able to use NVDA full-time as his primary screen reader, finally giving up his original commercial product. 

Providing feedback by synthetic speech, NVDA allows the user to access and interact with all parts of the Windows operating system, such as: 

Browsing the web (with Internet Explorer and Firefox)
Reading and writing documents with programs such as WordPad or Microsoft Word
Sending and receiving email with Outlook Express 
Using command-line programs in Dos windows
Producing basic spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel
General computer management through My Computer / Windows Explorer, Control Panel applets, and other generic Windows tasks

NVDA is not restricted by a need to follow market trends and demands. Commercial screen readers implement really good features, but sometimes this is biased by what the market wants, rather than what will be really useful for the user. NVDA may not be always as stable as other screen readers, but it can certainly act as an experimental and testing tool. It can easily and quickly test new ideas and features perhaps not seen in other screen readers for the Windows Operating System. An example of this is NVDA's ability to use beeps to communicate to the user that a progress bar is moving. The higher the beep, the closer the progress bar is to the end. People have added this feature in to other screen readers through custom scripts and the like, but it has never been officially adapted completely in to the core of any other Windows screen reader. 

You can help the development of NVDA by notifying them of bugs as you encounter them. The instructions for reporting bugs, and a number of useful articles, can be found in the wiki at: www.nvda-project.org/nvda/wiki. Or, if you would like more general information about NVDA you can visit the website at: www.nvda-project.org/nvda. There, you can also find information on joining the NVDA mailing lists. There are currently two lists: one for general user related discussions and a development list for anyone who runs and tests NVDA 		from source. 

--- Copyright Info ---
Copyrigh	t (C) 2006-2007 Michael Curran <mick@kulgan.net>
	NVDA is covered by the GNU General Public License. You are free to share or change this software in any way you like as long as you distribute the licence along with the software, and make all source code available to anyone who wants it. This applies to both original and modified copies of the software, plus any software that uses code taken from this software.
For further details, you can view the licence online at:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Or see the file Copying.txt that came with this software.
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To contact the creater, please send an email to:
Michael Curran <mick@kulgan.net>
