Hello NVDA users,

 

As requested by moderators, please direct further comments to GitHub issue:

 

A few minutes ago one of the NVDA code contributors tweeted that annoying status bar announcement issue is caused by changes made to Thunderbird itself. In short, Thunderbird placed a tag on its status bar that will cause NVDA to announce messages continuously (technical: ARIA role status was used for status bar).

 

Unless it is justified that NVDA should resolve this issue on its own, this issue is something Thunderbird developers should resolve.

Cheers,

Joseph

Interesting observations.

Anybody else using a Braille display with a Braille keyboard who can check if it is possible to issue the command to show the date?

Daniel

By the way, and not using a braille display, when I wanted to get the date announced when NVDA was running I did hold down NVDA then hit F12 twice in rapid succession.

The original post makes me think that NVDA+F12,NVDA+F12 was being pressed twice in rapid succession.  I used NVDA+F12 followed by just F12 in rapid succession, never releasing the NVDA key before both F12s were pressed.   I got the Save dialog in word, or the show elements panel in Brave, if I did NVDA+F12, released NVDA and then hit F12 again quickly.  But never when I depress NVDA, keep it held, and then hit two F12s in rapid succession before releasing NVDA.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 1909, Build 18363  

Power is being told you're not loved and not being destroyed by it.

       ~ Madonna

Shaun,

            The fact that you've reported this is great, really great.  But if you used both Bugzilla and GitHub then we're talking two different systems and two different bug reports.

             Having taken the time to look up this bug, it is a Bugzilla Bug on Thunderbird, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1628891, and is not connected with GitHub in any way.  For those who have, or open, a Bugzilla Account you can add additional specific commentary to the filed bug.

             GitHub and Bugzilla are completely separate project management systems.  Thunderbird and Firefox are on Bugzilla.  NVDA is on GitHub.

--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 1909, Build 18363  

Power is being told you're not loved and not being destroyed by it.

       ~ Madonna

 

 

Hi all,

If this is happening with add-ons off, chances are that NVDA is picking up events it should not react to. The most likely candidate is a live region, and if yes, it is something Thunderbird developers must fix unless folks insist that NVDA developers do, in which case a workaround might be written.

Cheers,

Joseph

 

From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Gene
Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 3:54 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Thunderbird talking way too much

 

Considering the popularity of Thunderbird, NVDA developers might be willing to implement a fix.  Most people won’t have any idea what to do about these problems.  We also don’t know how much work is involved and how important the fix is compared to other projects being worked on, but asking about a fix would be a good idea.  I would imagine that NVDA developers would like to find out how long it might be before Thunderbird corrects the problem or if they intend to do so once they get reports.

 

Gene

----- Original Message -----

From: David Goldfield

Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2020 5:27 PM

To: nvda@nvda.groups.io

Subject: Re: [nvda] Thunderbird talking way too much

 

Gene,

This may not be an NVDA problem specifically but I believe that the problem does not occur as frequently, if at all, with JAWS. This is not at all to suggest that NVDA is at all inferior but only that it's somehow intercepting these messages differently.

David Goldfield,

Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist

JAWS Certified, 2019

WWW.DavidGoldfield.org

On 4/9/2020 6:15 PM, Gene wrote:

 

but this isn’t an NVDA problem.  I suspect there is some way that speech is being forced, perhaps as in Chrome during downloads.  It would be interesting as a test to move away from the program window while something is changing such as when downloading messages to see if NVDA still speaks whatever speech is occuring in the window.  In Chrome when a file is downloading, speech is forced whether you are in the program window or not. 

 

Gene

----- Original Message -----

From: Ron Canazzi

Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2020 2:53 PM

To: nvda@nvda.groups.io

Subject: Re: [nvda] Thunderbird talking way too much

 

Hi Brian,

Your analysis is probably correct, but I am wondering just why the issue didn't exist in versions of Thunderbird earlier than 60.9.  Remember, before that time, the status line was visible, but screen readers: JAWS and NVDA didn't report all dynamic changes.  It was there and you could read it with the hotkey for status line. 

With the reintroduction of the status line, we now have this problem.  I wonder if NVDA programers can do something to change this--perhaps coming up with some sort of display silently and invoking reading with hotkey.

On 4/9/2020 10:38 AM, Brian Vogel wrote:

My guess is that the good folks at Thunderbird had gotten complaints that it was impossible to know, for instance, whether all new e-mail had completed downloading when you fired up T-bird at the start of the day, and decided to expose a lot more information presented on the status bar to the screen reader.

What they probably hadn't counted on is the fact that a screen reader will detect changes and read them as they're detected, and that's really, really irritating if you're reading your e-mail messages and status stuff just barges in while doing so.

If they have sighted folks doing testing for these new functions, it wouldn't surprise me if they just sat there when the status bar was really active watching to see that it was being reported correctly, never moving along like one normally would into reading messages.  And I can get that, as even though I have the status bar displayed, I virtually never look at it at all.  The occasional glance occurs, but I wouldn't really miss it at all if it weren't there by default.

It's well-nigh impossible for most of us who see to have any real idea of exactly how screen reader users typically approach using various pieces of software (and I include myself, though I do have at least some idea at this point).  And there will never be enough in-house actual screen reader users doing accessibility testing.  That's one of the reasons I push so hard to get folks who encounter accessibility issues to file bug/issue/trouble reports with the companies that produce the software.  You all are able to give a far more accurate description of what the software is doing that you don't want with the screen reader as well as what the preferred behavior would be.  Also, given your years of end-user experience, you're often in a far better position to know whether the issue you're having is with the screen reader or due to a change in the software you're using the screen reader to access, and that's often the key to getting to the root of the problem as well as the fix.

--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 1909, Build 18363  

Power is being told you're not loved and not being destroyed by it.

       ~ Madonna

 

 

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