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Most Responsive and Accessible Version of Microsoft Word
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Bhavya shah
Dear all,
I currently use NVDA 2020.4, Microsoft Office 365, and Windows 10 on a fairly high-spec machine. Within the Office suite, the bulk of my usage (and of my dissatisfaction) is with Microsoft Word. I find NVDA to be quite slow when navigating through any document in Word 365, particularly in terms of paragraph navigation in case of large paragraphs. The spelling and grammar check dialog is not as convenient as it used to be in the past. I should note that I have tried enabling Word UIA and it does substantially help with NVDA's responsiveness in Word 365, but introduces its own set of bugs. I can't recall exact versions, but in the past, I believeI have used versions such as 2007, 2010, and 2013, and I feel like all of them were much more conducive to a snappy NVDA performance. I understand that work on improving NVDA and Microsoft Office 365's interplay is on going, but from my perspective, I think it might not be at a point just yet such that it maximizes my productivity. Having said all of that, I was wondering if you had thoughts on which of most recent versions of Word are most responsive. To be clear, what I mainly mean by responsiveness is just that when I navigate in a document, NVDA's latency is low and its speech feedback is almost immediate. For other software, I would just get trials of several past versions of the software, run them as something equivalent to a portable copy, and practically try and test each of them; I don't think that can be done for Microsoft Office though. I would greatly appreciate all inputs and suggestions in this regard. Thanks. -- Best Regards Bhavya Shah Stanford University | Class of 2024 E-mail Address: bhavya.shah125@... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavyashah125/ |
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David Goldfield
Bhavya, while I have experienced the delays you are referring to I found that the performance seemed to be linked more to the computer being used rather than a particular build of Microsoft Word, with performance being much better on faster machines. I'd be interested in the exact specs for your machine. Also, you didn't say which speech engine you are using. On a reasonably modern machine I find that Espeak gives me the best in overall performance and responsiveness although the Vocalizer voices from Code Factory are also quite good. Have you tried running the Com registration fixing tool from the NVDA Tools menu? In an instance where using an older Dell OptiPlex running this tool made a noticeable difference in Word's performance. On that same OptiPlex I also remember that performance was unacceptable at one point but running this tool along with later NVDA updates seemed to improve things.
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David Goldfield, Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist JAWS Certified, 2019 Subscribe to the Tech-VI announcement list to receive emails regarding news and events in the blindness assistive technology field. Email: tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io www.DavidGoldfield.org -----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Bhavya shah Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2021 10:43 AM To: nvda <nvda@nvda.groups.io> Subject: [nvda] Most Responsive and Accessible Version of Microsoft Word Dear all, I currently use NVDA 2020.4, Microsoft Office 365, and Windows 10 on a fairly high-spec machine. Within the Office suite, the bulk of my usage (and of my dissatisfaction) is with Microsoft Word. I find NVDA to be quite slow when navigating through any document in Word 365, particularly in terms of paragraph navigation in case of large paragraphs. The spelling and grammar check dialog is not as convenient as it used to be in the past. I should note that I have tried enabling Word UIA and it does substantially help with NVDA's responsiveness in Word 365, but introduces its own set of bugs. I can't recall exact versions, but in the past, I believeI have used versions such as 2007, 2010, and 2013, and I feel like all of them were much more conducive to a snappy NVDA performance. I understand that work on improving NVDA and Microsoft Office 365's interplay is on going, but from my perspective, I think it might not be at a point just yet such that it maximizes my productivity. Having said all of that, I was wondering if you had thoughts on which of most recent versions of Word are most responsive. To be clear, what I mainly mean by responsiveness is just that when I navigate in a document, NVDA's latency is low and its speech feedback is almost immediate. For other software, I would just get trials of several past versions of the software, run them as something equivalent to a portable copy, and practically try and test each of them; I don't think that can be done for Microsoft Office though. I would greatly appreciate all inputs and suggestions in this regard. Thanks. -- Best Regards Bhavya Shah Stanford University | Class of 2024 E-mail Address: bhavya.shah125@... LinkedIn: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fbhavyashah125%2F&;data=04%7C01%7C%7C7bbf5613a2e1434cc9e008d8dbff8fd0%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637501237954777808%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=J1w68%2F8ZsSY55Vzv%2FELIGx330K0eDiIF6fIYmSUkisU%3D&reserved=0 |
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Strangely, I see even faster performance with a particular version of IBM Eloquence than with eSpeak. Both are very snappy indeed though, and we're talking only a few milliseconds difference here.
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Bhavya shah
Dear David and Chris,
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Interestingly, I use a mixture of ESpeak-NG and IBM Eloquence myself, switching between the two from time to time. I think it is unlikely that this issue has to do with the speech engine, because latency therein would appear in more than just Word, unlike the Word-specific lags I am encountering. In terms of specs, my laptop has 16 gb DDR4 RAM and an Intel I7 10th gen CPU. The lag I am talking about is, approximately, of several hundred milliseconds, and occurs to varying degrees during character, line as well as paragraph navigation (non-exhaustive list). However, I ran the COM registration fixing tool to no effect, but then restarted with add-ons disabled, and I think there has been a noticeable change in performance. I would like to measure this quantitatively so that I can detect changes with sureity rather than by the sense I get; I understand information about time after gesture for speech used to be recorded at one point in the Log Viewer, though it does not seem to be anymore. This is a deviation from my original question, but could someone please guide me as to how to find out the exact time it takes for NVDA to speak after an input? Thanks. On 2/28/21, Chris Smart <ve3rwj@...> wrote:
Strangely, I see even faster performance with a particular version of --
Best Regards Bhavya Shah Stanford University | Class of 2024 E-mail Address: bhavya.shah125@... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavyashah125/ |
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