hello. I'd like to try using Quickbooks with NVDA. Unfortunately, with the native NVDA,
this doesn't work. Specifically, NVDA sees the window, but thinks the window has no content.
There was an addon for Quickbooks specifically, published in 2014. Unfortunately, as currently
implemented, it's not compatible with the latest version of the addon API. So, my question is,
how hard is it to update an addon to be compatible with the latest version of the API? Are the
changes to the API pretty incremental or are they quite radical?

-thanks
-Brian

There are several questions here:

1. What version of QuickBooks?

2. What add-on are you referring to?  I'm aware of the one here:  https://addons.nvda-project.org/addons/quickBooks2014.es.html and it looks like there was one that was written by Mick Curren (and this may be it, but that's not obvious on the source page). 

3. Are you hoping to use it with NVDA 2022.x?  I'm presuming yes, but it never hurts to ask.
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It used to be understood that if you published and profited from a mass media platform you should also be responsible for its content. That idea is nowadays considered quaintly archaic. There is no real accountability, and almost limitless ability to post any kind of ridiculous and scurrilous nonsense. God help us.

       ~ Ross Goldbaum, Letter to the New York Times,

          Regulating Media: It’s Now Seen as a Quaint Idea, November 13, 2022

Hello. Following up on this thread, here are the answers to the questions I saw, as well
as some additional notes.

I've started with:
quickBooks2014-2014.4.7

Author: NV Access Limited

I've downloaded this addon and have modified it enough to get it to load with the newest
release version of NVDA and to begin talking to Quickbooks 2020. I don't yet have it working,
but I have promise. My plan is to take up a thread on the nvda-devel list to see if folks can
advise me on the best way to get over the issues I've run into while trying to update this
addon. I'm not a python expert, but I have been programming for many years at both the
operating system and application levels, so I have a pretty high degree of confidence that I'll
get something working.

Thanks for the help and the suggestions.
-Brian

Brian,

I'd suggest going to the NVDA Add-On Developers Group, AKA NVDA Add-Ons Central, first. This group is focused on the development of NVDA Add-Ons.  It is not an end-user support group. 

• Subscribe: nvda-addons+subscribe@nvda-addons.groups.io
• Post: nvda-addons@nvda-addons.groups.io
• Unsubscribe: nvda-addons+unsubscribe@nvda-addons.groups.io
• Group Owner: nvda-addons+owner@nvda-addons.groups.io
• Help: nvda-addons+help@nvda-addons.groups.io

Brian
--

It used to be understood that if you published and profited from a mass media platform you should also be responsible for its content. That idea is nowadays considered quaintly archaic. There is no real accountability, and almost limitless ability to post any kind of ridiculous and scurrilous nonsense. God help us.

       ~ Ross Goldbaum, Letter to the New York Times,

          Regulating Media: It’s Now Seen as a Quaint Idea, November 13, 2022

Well all I can tell you is that a charity I know used quick books quite successfully until recently, mainly with Jaws. Now even after some scripting its still rubbish, and so I enquired how the worker was getting on. You will love this bit. The company behind Quick Books paid for a subscription to Aira for the organisation to allow them to use it.
I suspect that this is also going on in the USA, in order to get around the mammoth cock up they made in their latest version and the Americans with Disabilities and allowing government departments to still buy it. Its such a shame when a whole piece of software that worked well is let down by the API and gets out into the marketplace. My one problem with their approach is that in effect this sends the signals that the employee cannot do the job any more and that Quickbooks are (insert rude word here) on disability rights.

Brian

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Hi:  We maybe going to see a change here.  An update to the 21st century communications bill from 2010 has been updated as of yesterday.  The new act is the CVTA Act to help blind and deaf to have better communications and technology.  Several organizations including the American Council of the Blind and the AFB were behind it.  How long it will take to start with, depending on how long of time before the bill goes into effect.

Dave

hello. Following up on Brian's comments about organizations resorting to AIRA in order to
accommodate their employees, I'll make a couple of observations of things I've found as I
research this problem.

1. I now have the add-on enabling Quickbooks Enterprize Solutions 20.0's accessibility mode
and NVDA can see and provide access to many of the controls inside Quickbooks. Whether this is
sufficient to make Quickbooks usable or not is still an open question since I know virtually
nothing about how to use Quickbooks and what the work flow looks like when things are working
as they should. I am now reading documentation for Quickbooks that I hope will help me come to
a better understanding of what it is that I'm seeing in the application, as well as what I'm
not seeing.
I've also learned that there are two sides to this accessibility equation; something I've
known conceptually for a long time, but which I can now hang a technical explanation on. that
is, the NVDA module I'm working on enables and uses the accessibility APIs Quickbooks uses to
tell NVDA what it's doing. To make matters more complicated, it appears that Quickbooks
doesn't send standard control data across that API, so the module must interpret the data it
receives via the API into a set of standard controls and gestures which the user uses to
interact with the application. Thus, in order to make Quickbooks fully accessible, Quickbooks
must send all the details of what it's doing through the API. Then, the module I'm looking at
must take that data and translate it into presentable controls to show the user what's going
on, as well as provide translated keystrokes and gestures for the user to use in order to send
instructions back to the application. This all makes sense, but I didn't realize that it was
optional for an application to use the accessibility APIs in modern Windows, and that it might
not be turned on by default.

Where I am now with this add-on is that it enables the accessibility mode in Quickbooks and
it's definitely seeing controls and data coming across. I'm not sure, at this point, if it
knows how to interpret all the data it's receiving or if Quickbooks is just not sending all the
data it should to make things accessible. Further, as I said earlier, because I don't know the
application, I'm not sure if what I have right now is enough to use the program. I believe it
is, but that remains to be seen.

2. in the spirit of arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, Intuit has announced the
end of support for their desktop applications as of May 31, 2023. Their answer to this
problem: use Quickbooks on-line.

For me, that's not an option at this moment due to issues outside the scope of this
conversation, so I'll continue working to improve the Quickbooks module so that it uses all
the data it gets from Quickbooks.

-thanks
-Brian


https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/feature-preferences/quickbooks-desktop-service-discontinuation-policy/L17cXxlie_US_en_US

From: Brian (up thread)

Well all I can tell you is that a charity I know used quick books quite successfully until
recently, mainly with Jaws. Now even after some scripting its still rubbish, and so I
enquired how the worker was getting on. You will love this bit. The company behind Quick
Books paid for a subscription to Aira for the organisation to allow them to use it.
I suspect that this is also going on in the USA, in order to get around the mammoth cock
up
they made in their latest version and the Americans with Disabilities and allowing
government departments to still buy it. Its such a shame when a whole piece of software
that worked well is let down by the API and gets out into the marketplace. My one problem
with their approach is that in effect this sends the signals that the employee cannot do
the job any more and that Quickbooks are (insert rude word here) on disability rights.
Brian
--