Category: Geeks r Us
has any one used the screen reader NVDA?
Yes i used it. Is this the answer you wanted to hear? Or did you want to hear more comments on NVDA maybe? You didn't tell us what exactly you are looking for.
Anyway i will tell you what i think of it.
NVDA is a good screen reader for a free one. It can be very helpfull where another screen reader is not available. It is not very advanced yet but it constantly develops so in a few years i think it will be a very valuable product. Even now some people use it full time.
It still lucks a vertual mouse simulator like jaws curcer or vertual focus etc. But the developers are looking for a solution for this. The fact that it doesn't need video intersept means that it can be run on any computer without administration rights. It can be run from a memory stick as well and now the fact that it has got with it the espeak as a stand alone drive it makes it indipendent from everything. Before it needed sapi5 but now it can be run without one present.
Anything else you want to know?
It is pritty good on the internet but the pages take some time to load if they are bigg and it hasn't got list of links etc.
Maybe i said a lot but didn't exactly tell us what you wanted to know.
I think lots of us have at least tried NVDA; why not, it's free and open-source. It's not yet ready for prime-time, but, shows great promise. Why not experiment with it, you have nothing to lose. Share your impressions.
I think it is useful as a free screen reader or an alternate screen reader when one is not available. I like the portability. I find it a bit clumsy on the internet but it has its purposes for troubleshooting and getting work done when the traditional screen readers fail. I like the fact it is self voicing but an american voice would be helpful. I have clients who cringe at the robotics of the synthesizer.
Where do you download that or get the NVDA thing from?
As to the voice quality, you are able to set NVDA to use any sapi compliant synth installed on the system. This doesn't really help if you're using it portably, but if you want to use it for any length of time on a given machine, installing something like VW Paul would be a viable option.
--Al
You can get nvda at www.nvda-project.org.
Click on download and you can get two versions. One is an installer and the other one is a zip folder. Both are the same. The installer puts some shortcuts on your computer and it puts nvda in the add remove programs. But appart from that it doesn't matter which one you download. Also the installer is self voicing.
I've tried NVDA now and find that the voice that was already on there didn't sound much different from the one used on Supernover.