Many people on the NVDA screen reader email list at www.nvaccess.org including me have seen over the years libreoffice crashing and or freezing for long periods with NVDA screen reader. Therefore I propose the following. Make libreoffice a completely self-voiceing application by 1. putting NVDA in sleep mode and taking over what, when, and how NVDA speaks options. 2. Detect when NVDA is loaded, bring up a dialog letting the user know to put NVDA into sleep mode when using this applications with an ok button… you hit OK, put NVDA into sleep mode and libreoffice talks directly to NVDA using NVDA controller client. This is how talking dosbox works. the dos screen reader talks directly to NVDA in sleep mode having full control over what NVDA speaks and what is brailled with braille display output. If libreoffice used NVDA in sleep mode, controlling what is spoken and brailled much much more powerful, responsive, and better screen access could be achieved. note that this should also be sure to let dictation bridge NVDA addon still work or function, so that people could dictate into libreoffice with their chosen speech recognition software. so examples, with libreoffice in complete control of NVDA with NVDA in sleep mode libreoffice would pretty much be a self-voiceing application when needed. and it could then do the following.
- every part of the application could be made accessible including writer, calc, impress, database, math equation editor and so on.
- ability to read charts and graphs in calc.
- ability to toggle a browseMode feature on and off so you could view the document as a temporary web page getting a good idea of layout, font, tables, and other formatting abilities.
- a beginner mode so new users would have extra tutorial messages about how to navigate in libreoffice.
- all libreoffice extensions would also speak or be able to talk directly to NVDA using NVDA in sleep mode and controlling speech and braille messages directly with the NVDA controller client.
- spell check and all other features would work perfectly because libreoffice is the one directly controlling NVDA.
The way I understand it now is that java access bridge talks to screen readers not directly, but indirectly through some sort of accessibility framework that does not always work well and results and freezing and crashes. and its sort of half-baked. If libreoffice pair with NVDA took full control with NvDA in sleep mode I think it could do so much more and be as stable and responsive as possible. even going so far as reading and editing math equations by borrowing from NVDA’s ability to already read math ml content. I hope my suggestion can be implemented soon so we have a very powerful open source and self-voicing office suite complete with addons, templates, and so on. thanks.