On the matter of sensible defaults

[Sean Randall]

Following on from Quentin’s message earlier today, I wondered what the consensus was on a few of the default NVDA settings.

 

In the Browse mode settings, the “use screen layout” option is ticked by default. I very occasionally turn this on for testing the physical layout of a web page but having been a JAWS user since before Internet Explorer 6, the one thing per line approach is habit for me. It renders better in Braille and just seems to work for my brain, and is pretty much always the first thing I turn off after a fresh NVDA install.  Also, having taught blind people for a number of years I can’t think of a single keyboard user I taught who preferred it on, but of course that could be biased by my own preferences.

 

In the document formatting settings, I firstly wondered about font:

It seems strange to me that “Emphasis” isn’t checked, when it is quite common on the web, but “Highlighted (marked) text” isn’t. Am I missing a nuance? And further down I’ve *never* understood why “clickable” is on by default.

Particularly when buttons or links are also on. How often do people encounter something that is both clickable and neither a button nor a link?

 

I bring these up out of consideration of new users, really. For those of us who update, we might rarely think about what we changed years ago, and for power users we’re used to customising things. NVDA does have a reputation for loquacity, and I’m sure some of that is because unlike JAWS’s startup wizard, you can’t turn a lot of this stuff off from the outset.

 

I’d be interested to know other people’s thoughts. I’ve not searchedGithub for this stuff yet, but this mailing list may well be a more representative forum for a less technical discussion.

 

--

Sean Randall
Digital accessibility Specialist.
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[jacob kruger]

Just my opinion, but, when first switched over from jaws to NVDA, one of the first things was positively glad about was screen layout - maybe has to do with fact that am professionally a web-developer of sorts?

Also prefer to be aware off all interactive elements ASAP, instead of needing to move down line-by-line when not in the process of read-to-end.

In terms of document formatting, I hardly ever change the default announcement choices, besides turning off all forms of automatic spelling error notifications, and being notified about general formatting changes would only be relevant to me when was specifically working on something like proof-reading formatting.

There, I might create separate configuration profiles

In terms of announcing clickable, etc., this might also have to do with my web-development context, and it relates to that nowadays, almost any form of web element can be marked as clickable, and especially since modern web-content producers don't necessarily follow any of the old-school design styles/guidelines, it can be quite relevant in terms of how to interact with web-content that you are aware that something is in fact clickable/awaiting interaction?

In other words, think NVAccess is probably just trying to follow process of meeting expectations most common, or something, and in other words, "to each their own..?"

But, suppose we also just get used to how it's been for quite a while as well?

Jacob Kruger
"Resistance is futile...acceptance is versatile..."

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[Quentin Christensen]

With the screen layout question, that one did come up last year.  See this post on it (which links to a poll a user conducted on Mastodon):  NV Access | In-Process 12th June 2025

The result of that poll was that 50% of the respondents (56 people) said they had the setting off, 16% preferred it on, and 34% didn't know.  TBH, if we have a setting on by default and you want it off and know about it and can change it yourself, I'm not as worried about that, as the potential users who might prefer the setting the other way but don't even know it exists.

The other tricky thing is that much as many of us quite like Mastodon, we do need to acknowledge that responses to a poll on Mastodon about NVDA settings is going to likely get people responding who are more technical and comfortable with the web than some other users, and who likely follow information about NVDA more closer (or are friends with James who made the poll). So there is definitely a split, but we'd probably need to know about that 34% and how they would vote, as well as how experienced they all are to have a better idea.  Jacob's response here highlights that while one user might have a strong opinion about disabling a feature, another user will have a strong opinion the other way, so it's a balancing act, and partly the trick is ensuring that options are relatively easy to find so people CAN quickly change things to their liking, and perhaps it's also worth a prompt now and then to actually go through and have a look at settings you might change.

In deciding on the default state for a setting, we want to do what the majority of users want, but also what the newest majority of users want.  (if 60% of users prefer a setting to be less verbose than the default, BUT the 40% who prefer it more verbose are the newest users of NVDA, I'd be inclined to go with the 40% there)

Emphasis vs Highlight, I'm not sure why one is enabled and not the other.  I see from our changes doc that emphasis USED to be enabled by default and was turned off by default in 2016: (link to the related issue, but if you want to propose a change, please create a new issue): Semantic support (not just style support) for del and ins on web pages · Issue #4920 · nvaccess/nvda

Clickable is one of those ones which was really useful until every element on every web page adopted it.  I do see we have an issue requesting suppressing "Clickable" for elements known to be interactive, like buttons: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/19336 - that might go some way to making the remaining announcements of it more useful?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/a4d1caaf-7f45-4212-8afe-ff4d82d1d349%40blindza.co.za.

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Quentin Christensen

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[Patrick Le Baudour]

Hi,

On 20/05/2026 10:22, Sean Randall wrote:

I’ve *never* understood why “clickable” is on by default.

Particularly when buttons or links are also on. How often do people encounter something that is both clickable and neither a button nor a link?

 

I can only talk about my own experience here, but while I wouldn't call it frequent, it's not that unusual for me to encounter some. A couple of websites even have some with no content, probably using a background image, so without the 'clickable  clickable clickable" being announced I wouldn't know there's something in the first place.

It's a wild guess here, but the websites I'm thinking about not being in english, it may be possible that US legislation  prevents things for content aimed at english-language users that would still be used if the main target country has a lesser legislation or doesn't apply it strongly, making some user's experience quite different.

-- Patrick LB

[Gene Asner]

I have advocated for years and of course nothing has happened, that this
setting be changed. For one thing, a lot of NVDA users aren't on email
lists and as with programs in general, a lot of users aren't going to
learn much and don't even know of this setting. It is better to have
every link on its own line for most uses than to have more than one link
on some lines. And many users start out with JAWS and have no idea why
things are different in this respect with NVDA but they probably don't
complain because many people just accept computer-related technology as
it is.

I almost never discuss the question any more because it doesn't result
in any change. I have also, in my recollection, never seen a reason set
forth why use screen layout is superior for general use or as a default.
Every other screen-reader in my recollection uses the one link on a
line default, System Access did as I recall, Window-eyes, and JAWS. I
don't advocate NVDA having a feature or layout just because other
screen-readers do, but there are times when something is generally used
for good reasons.

Also, since the system tray can't be used in Windows 11 with first
letter navigation, the systray list should be moved to the core. Again,
I suspect that sixty or maybe seventy percent of NVDA users don't use
add-ons or have had someone like an instructor put certain ones one and
likely don't even know that the add-on exists.

As I said, a lot of people learn what they need to know and little more.

Gene

On 5/20/2026 3:22 AM, Sean Randall wrote:
> Following on from Quentin’s message earlier today, I wondered what the
> consensus was on a few of the default NVDA settings.
>

> Screenshot of NVDA's browse mode settings. In the Browse mode settings,
> the “use screen layout” option is ticked by default. I very occasionally
> turn this on for testing the physical layout of a web page but having
> been a JAWS user since before Internet Explorer 6, the one thing per
> line approach is habit for me. It renders better in Braille and just
> seems to work for my brain, and is pretty much always the first thing I
> turn off after a fresh NVDA install.  Also, having taught blind people
> for a number of years I can’t think of a single keyboard user I taught
> who preferred it on, but of course that could be biased by my own
> preferences.
>
> In the document formatting settings, I firstly wondered about font:
>

> Screenshot of the font section of NVDA's document formatting settings.
>
> It seems strange to me that “Emphasis” isn’t checked, when it is quite
> common on the web, but “Highlighted (marked) text” isn’t. Am I missing a

> nuance? And further down I’ve **never** understood why “clickable” is on
> by default.
>

> Screenshot of the bottom "elements" section of NVDA's document

> formatting settings.Particularly when buttons or links are also on. How

> often do people encounter something that is both clickable and neither a
> button nor a link?
>
> I bring these up out of consideration of new users, really. For those of
> us who update, we might rarely think about what we changed years ago,
> and for power users we’re used to customising things. NVDA does have a
> reputation for loquacity, and I’m sure some of that is because unlike
> JAWS’s startup wizard, you can’t turn a lot of this stuff off from the
> outset.
>
> I’d be interested to know other people’s thoughts. I’ve not
> searchedGithub for this stuff yet, but this mailing list may well be a
> more representative forum for a less technical discussion.
>
> --
>
> Sean Randall
> Digital accessibility Specialist.

> Email: con...@SeanRandall.me <mailto:con...@SeanRandall.me>
> Tel/Whatsapp/iMessage: +44(0)7969662640
> UK.Linkedin.Com/In/AccessibleSean
> <https://uk.linkedin.com/in/AccessibleSean>

>
> --
> ***
> 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.
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[Sarah Alawami]

I actually prefer the first option, the links and stuff on same line. I've always hated the separate, line, for, links. I put the commas there in that last sentence for emphasis not as a grammar thing. 

As for the second point, I don't care about emphasis on the web so I don't care either way regarding that default.

For or clickable items, let them be on so I can report them as name role value as those are things  misrendered by the product I'm testing.

By  the way thanks for putting alt text on your images. you rock regarding non-text items.

--

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Please note: the NVDA project has a Citizen and Contributor Code of Conduct.
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