1. Nvda | Nvda
  2. Messages

Re: LibreOffice and NVDA

David Goldfield
 

Brian,
I appreciate the recommendation. I may give this program a try. I'm wondering if NVDA's object navigation commands can be used to select the user interface. I'll report back with findings although, for me, I'm fairly content with LibreOffice as an Office alternative for the things I use it for. 
David Goldfield,
Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
JAWS Certified, 2019

WWW.DavidGoldfield.org
On 12/10/2020 4:53 PM, Brian Vogel wrote:

By the way, I am back to strongly recommending SoftMaker Free Office as an alternative to Microsoft Office for those who need only a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation manager.  It has the added bonus of running under Windows, Linux, and on the Mac.

Now, this strong recommendation comes with several provisos:

1.  When you first start any one of the programs, you are asked what user interface style you want, but nothing is announced for each of the three choices for ribbon options nor for each of the two options for menu-driven options.

2.  The ribbon interface is absolutely, positively NOT accessible with NVDA.  I presume this is a problem with SoftMaker's software.

3.  From the testing I've done, the menu-driven user interface (UI) is 100% accessible with NVDA, which is what makes this suite an option.

You would want a sighted assistant right after install so that when you fire up any one of the three programs, TextMaker (word processor), PlanMaker (spreadsheet), or Presentations (equivalent of PowerPoint) as that's the point at which the user interface choice is made.  Making it for any one of the three makes that choice apply to the other two as well, or at least it did for me.

This suite is the most like MS-Word of any that I have worked with, and now that it appears it is accessible if the menu-driven UI is chosen, it's worth another look.  If anyone tries it, and finds accessibility stumbling blocks with the menu-driven UI, please report back on where it is/they are occurring.  There's no way I can get beyond basic testing and dig in to each and every option in each and every menu.

You can have SoftMaker Office save the files it creates in Microsoft document formats and set this up as the default.  But the initial default is not the Microsoft formats, but it's own.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 20H2, Build 19042  

If you think that you can think about a thing, inextricably attached to something else, without thinking of the thing it is attached to, then you have a legal mind.

        ~ Thomas Reed Powell

 
Join {nvda@nvda.groups.io to automatically receive all group messages.