I do not experience sluggishness with nvda; I type at and average or faster speed. I do not use facebook so I cannot comment on that. I use all kinds of websites; n g os, corporate, government and private.
N v d a is not perfect, but it does 99 percent of what I need.

-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io [mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io] On Behalf Of Tony Malykh
Sent: December-28-18 11:32 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Sluggish user experience on Facebook

Hi Felix,
I'm on your side - I think sluggishness in NVDA is a problem, in fact a big one, and I wish NVDA developers could do something about that.
Facebook is not the only web site that has these issues, I experience the same problems on gmail and private web sites of company I work for. I have to switch to JAWS to browse these sites every time just because all these symptoms with NVDA are unbearable and makes these web sites completely unusable.

I think another problem with these issues is that the majority of NVDA users don't seem to be bothered by this issue, judging from reaction on this list. I think that:

1. People's typing speed differs a lot. I tend to type very fast, which probably exacerbates this issue for me. People who type slower might not be that annoyed by this issue, as for example the focus is sucked into edit boxes only when you're going through them quickly.
Felix, are you a quick typer as well?
2. Maybe people tend to stay away from these web sites that they cannot figure out how to use. Since Facebook is glitching with NVDA, blind people will have hard time to learn it and will use for example twitter instead. It becomes a chicken and egg problem. NVDA devs won't fix an issue that doesn't affect many users. And it won't affect many users because the issue is there to begin with.
3. In my experience the severity of this problem depends on the browser. Glitching in Google Chrome seems to be several times worse that in Firefox.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts. I wish I could help convince NVDA devs to have a closer look into this, but looking at github issues, this problem has been known since at least 2012 so I think it's unlikely it's going to be fixed any time soon. Unless we can find enough people bothered by this and maybe like file a petition. If I had more time, I might have tried to fix it myself, but unfortunatley I don't have much spare time. So in the meantime - I'll have to switch back and forth to Jaws.

Best
Tony



On 12/28/18, Felix G. <constantlyvariable@...> wrote:

Hello Enes and list,
sorry for my potentially confusing remark. I was not contrasting our
user experience with that of sighted users. Rather, I was implying
that some peculiarity of Facebook or the affected browsers might give
screen readers in general a hard time, and not just NVDA specifically.
So I did some testing, that is, I performed some comparative screen
reader theology, with the following results:
The late Window-Eyes, digital peace be upon it, occupies the slow end
of the speed scale combined with the high end of the accuracy scale.
You tend to get to wait quite some time for an answer, but when that
answer finally arrives, it is accurate to the degree of fully
supporting the weight of subsequent interactions.
JAWS seems to take quite the opposite approach, erring, when it does,
in favor of speed. There is the occasional unsolicited switch to focus
mode, as well as the occasional double-speaking of text, but the
snappy experience minimizes these frustrations.
NVDA currently takes what I call, from my perspective, the unfortunate
middle ground of this tradeoff. Applying this observation to Facebook,
it means that the experience is slow enough to feel sluggish, and just
unpredictable enough to feel nondeterministic as well. One can clearly
spot all the good intentions with which this particular road to hell
has been paved, so I wouldn't consider this proof that anything is
being consciously ignored, but the result, at least for me, combines
the worst of both worlds enough to make me switch screen readers when
using Facebook.
If, as Enes suggests, this observation applies to a broader category
of websites of which Facebook is just one prominent example, the
approach taken by NVDA in interacting with browsers deserves
reconsideration. Given the dynamic nature of todays's web, I strongly
suggest favoring speed over complete consistency. Selectively
decoupling focus from virtual cursor position, and re-coupling them on
demand, may be an effective first step in the right direction, as some
isolated speed cost when activating an element is allowable while a
permanent speed cost while navigating is clearly not.
All the best,
Felix

Am Do., 27. Dez. 2018 um 22:28 Uhr schrieb enes sarıbaş
<enes.saribas@...>:

hi,

Yes, as sighted obviously do not have this problem, or we would've
heard more about by now.

On 12/27/2018 7:49 PM, Felix G. wrote:

Hi,
so you're certain it's an NVDA issue rather than a Facebook or
browser one?
Best,
Felix

Am Do., 27. Dez. 2018 um 20:43 Uhr schrieb enes sarıbaş
<enes.saribas@...>:

hi,

This is an NVDA issue which has existed for about a few centuries,
which is also ignored by the devs. This happens not only in
facebook, but in many websites with dynamically changing content,
or with dialogues, for instance, the Oxford scholarship online
database my university subscribes to. This has to do with the way
NVDA interacts with the browser, however a better way was not
implemented.

On 12/27/2018 7:29 PM, Felix G. wrote:

Hi everyone,
is anyone else noticing that when arrowing or otherwise
navigating Facebook's standard view, the interface tends to slow
down to a crawl?
In addition, I am experiencing the virtual cursor randomly
jumping back a few lines, resulting in lines being read twice,
and random switches to focus mode.
Are there any known remedies, except of course switching to
mobile view, which is not even recommended to blind users by
Facebook itself?
All the best,
Felix