Forcing the reading of a selection

[Michael Malver]

Hello,
I know that if you press nvda/shift/up-arrow, the screen reader will read the selection. My problem is that I am making rather large selections, so when I ask it to read, what it says is something like “500 characters selected “
Is there a way to force the reading of the selected text?

[Sean Randall]

Hi Michael

The intention is to use the review cursor here, I suspect. Generally one already has a cursor available when making a text selection. I presume the selection length was put in place to mitigate the reading of long passages when a selection was made, but I agree that the Speak selection gesture should read the content completely.

Perhaps there's a ticket on this already — if nobody replies before I'm home tomorrow I'll take a look.



Sean


On 22 Sep 2025, at 19:36, Michael Malver <mma...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I know that if you press nvda/shift/up-arrow, the screen reader will read the selection. My problem is that I am making rather large selections, so when I ask it to read, what it says is something like “500 characters selected “
Is there a way to force the reading of the selected text?

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[Gene Asner]

If the text is too large, NVDA tells you the number of characters
selected and does nothing else. It does the same sort of thing if you
ask it to read what is on the clipboard if that material is beyond a
certain size

This is not the function of a screen-reader, to decide what the user
should hear and not hear when issuing commands like this. If the user
doesn't want to hear it all, he/she can press control, as usual, but
this behavior is very paternalistic and should be changed.

Gene

[Quentin Christensen]

This was initially introduced way back on NVDA 0.8 due to synthesizers lagging when reading large amounts of selected text (issue 249).

It would be worth creating an issue if you would like to see this changed.  If the lag issue would still be present, perhaps a solution could be that you press once and it reads the characters (where over 512 characters), press twice to read anyway, or perhaps display in a dialog which can be navigated?

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Training and Support Manager

NV Access

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[Mujtaba Merchant]

I'm experiencing an issue where NVDA doesn't read the words being selected when using CTRL + arrow keys in Outlook 2019 and Word documents. This issue doesn't occur in received emails, notepad  or WhatsApp.

 

I'm using Windows 10, Office 2019, and NVDA version 2025.3. I'd appreciate any guidance on how to resolve this issue or potential workarounds.

 

P.S. I will be upgrading to Windows 11 and a more recent version of Office by the end of this year or earlier and perhaps these issues will be taken care of.

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[Gene Asner]

If you want to give people an extra command, for what reason? What is
the benefit? I see none. A screen-reader simply should not have such a
limitation unlesws there is a serious technical problem about it.

Gene

Gene

> <mailto:mma...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> > I know that if you press nvda/shift/up-arrow, the screen reader
> will read the selection. My problem is that I am making rather large
> selections, so when I ask it to read, what it says is something like
> “500 characters selected “
> > Is there a way to force the reading of the selected text?
> >
> > --
> > ***
> > 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
> <https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md>
> >
> > You can contact the group owners and moderators via
> nvda-user...@nvaccess.org

> <mailto:nvda-users%2Bman...@nvaccess.org>.

> > ---
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the
> Google Groups "NVDA Screen Reader Discussion" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> send an email to nvda-users+...@nvaccess.org

> <mailto:nvda-users%2Bunsu...@nvaccess.org>.

> > To view this discussion visit
> https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/7BE902DB-6542-47A3-9F58-A45C99F4C66B%40gmail.com

> <https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/7BE902DB-6542-47A3-9F58-A45C99F4C66B%40gmail.com>.

> >
>
> --
> ***
> 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
> <https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md>
>
> You can contact the group owners and moderators via
> nvda-user...@nvaccess.org

> <mailto:nvda-users%2Bman...@nvaccess.org>.

> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
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> To view this discussion visit

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> <https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/3ca5dacd-bd02-db79-adb7-4169849c53e0%40gmail.com>.

>
>
>
> --
>
> Quentin Christensen
> Training and Support Manager
>
> NV Access

> www.nvaccess.org <http://www.nvaccess.org>
>
> Training: https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/ <https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/>

> Certification: https://certification.nvaccess.org/
> <https://certification.nvaccess.org/>
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> <http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess>

>
> --
> ***
> 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
> <https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md>
>
> You can contact the group owners and moderators via
> nvda-user...@nvaccess.org.
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[Michael Malver]

Additionally, maybe setting a user definedthreshold, wearing I could decide the number of characters under which a selection would be read. Maybe my synthesizer could handle a 4096 character block of text for example. I’m really not comfortable with the whole GitHub reporting system. I really wish something could be built into the systems of the average user could comfortably report bugs and propose issues. Perhaps the system is built the way it is to protect the average developer from the average user, but if so, that’s unfortunate.

On Sep 22, 2025, at 10:22 PM, Quentin Christensen <que...@nvaccess.org> wrote:



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[Quentin Christensen]

Michael,

That's certainly worth looking at - given how long ago the change was made, I don't know if the issue persists or if the acceptable delay varies between synthesizers. I would very much encourage you to explore creating an issue.  We have recently changed the template to make it easier to file issues.  Here is a direct link to the feature request issue template, which is shorter than the bug report template (and which this would fall under): https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/new?template=02-feature_request.yaml

All it wants is:

1) Title: a line of text something like: "Add a setting to specify the number of selected characters read"

2) "Is your feature request related to a problem, please describe" - describe the problem (eg how you would like to be able to adjust the amount of selected text NVDA can read before simply announcing the character count)

3) "Describe the solution you'd like" - just as you described, a setting to specify the amount of selected text it will read before giving a count.

4) "Describe alternatives you've considered" - here you could put investigating the ongoing need for a cutoff point (if it's not needed at all, it could just be removed and no setting would be required)

5) "Additional context" anything else relevant.

So there's really only three things you need to provide - a title for the issue, describe the problem and articulate the solution you've got in mind.  You've already articulated most of that.  The reason we need something like GitHub, is it is SPECIFICALLY for issues - there is no guarantee developers read the user group for instance, and even if they do, there is a lot of other discussion here - and even this thread for instance, doesn't entirely focus on summarising "here is the issue" and "here is a proposed solution".  GitHub is where you KNOW the developers will see it.  And for instance, if they work on a solution, and come back and say "we couldn't add a setting, but we changed the hardcoded value to 4096 characters.  Please try out this test version and see how it works" - you could try that version and work out whether it fixes the issue for you.  I think there is a lot of "GitHub is scary because it's for developers" when in fact, you never need to venture past the "issues" section if you don't want to go near the code.  Could it be better?  Yes, and our updating the issue template is a way of trying to make that experience better, so I'd definitely be keen to hear your feedback once you try it.

Kind regards

Quentin

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