NVDA advanced settings and chromium based browsers

[David Ouimet]

I been wanting to ask a question about this advanced setting in NVDA. 

Use UI Automation for Chromium based browsers when available: only when necessary

Why does NVDA have it set to this way when UI automation is used so much in chromium based browsers today? 

I know there might be a good reason for it, but I just wanted to get a better understanding how NVDA's code deep inside works with chromium based browsers.

David Ouimet

[joseph....@gmail.com]

Hi,

A web browser consists of web document(s) and the user interface, and for Chromium family (including Microsoft Edge), web document (browse mode) portion uses IAccessible2 as opposed to UIA which is used elsewhere.

Cheers,

Joseph

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[David Ouimet]

Thanks for answering that Joseph, So NVDA utilizes IAccessible2 more than UI Automation, like libreoffice does.

David Ouimet

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From: nvda-...@nvaccess.org <nvda-...@nvaccess.org> on behalf of joseph....@gmail.com <joseph....@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2025 8:30 AM
To: nvda-...@nvaccess.org <nvda-...@nvaccess.org>
Subject: RE: [NVDA] NVDA advanced settings and chromium based browsers

 

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[Quentin Christensen]

You'll notice other "Use UI Automation for ...." options in advanced there as well.  While Microsoft are pushing UIA as a full replacement for iAccessible2, it has been a slow transition and both we and them are still improving support.  There came a point where we made UIA the default for newer versions of Microsoft Word once it got to the point where the overall experience for most users, most of the time, was arguably better with UIA than without.  Once we get to that point with other things, we will make it the default for that as well.

The issue is that we can't necessarily call both UIA and IAccessible2 to each get the same information about something and then evaluate which one is better, so if we switch fully to UIA for Chromium for instance, then you will lose access to any information which is ONLY available via IAccessible2.

If you are interested in testing, you can switch to UIA in Chrome with that advanced option and see what does work better, and what still needs work (and do please ensure we have open issues for anything which does not yet work - https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues - that will help us as we progress towards UIA support for more things).

Kind regards

Quentin

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[David Ouimet]

Hi Quentin, Thanks for the current update on what's going on. NVDA is working very well with chromium based browsers, but it will be interesting seeing how things progress in the future.

David Ouimet

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From: Quentin Christensen <que...@nvaccess.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2025 6:29 PM
To: nvda-...@nvaccess.org <nvda-...@nvaccess.org>
Subject: Re: [NVDA] NVDA advanced settings and chromium based browsers

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[Derek Riemer]

The UIA support in Chromeum is still much less battle tested than the ia2 support, and you'll have a better experience with ia2, the default. It utilizes full virtual buffers, which modern uia versions don't, because of api differences. The communication with the browser is just different, and the underlying tech is different. It still uses browse mode, It just doesn't use the old virtual buffer technology.

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Please note: the NVDA project has a Citizen and Contributor Code of Conduct.
NV Access expects that all community members will read and abide by the rules set out in this document while participating in this group.
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
 
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Derek Riemer
Improving the world one byte at a time!        ⠠⠊⠍⠏⠗⠕⠧⠬ ⠮ ⠸⠺ ⠐⠕ ⠃⠽⠞⠑ ⠁⠞ ⠁ ⠐⠞⠖
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