How to prevent NVDA from separating words on web pages
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Veli Laasala
Mar 28, 2026, 12:22:49 PMMar 28
to NVDA Screen Reader Discussion
I mean the situations, where the html code contains, for example:
<a href="anotherpage.htm">word</a>suffix
where "suffix" could be any non-spacing characters, i.e. punctuation
symbols, letters etc. As you can see, there is no space between the link
element and the suffix.
Now NVDA or sapi5 speech synthesis driver sends the page content to the
TTS engine as: "word[space or some other separator character]suffix",
when it should do send it as: "wordsuffix".
If somebody could tell me what is the separator character used in these
situations, this would be for help, as well.
Thanks in advance,
Veli
<a href="anotherpage.htm">word</a>suffix
where "suffix" could be any non-spacing characters, i.e. punctuation
symbols, letters etc. As you can see, there is no space between the link
element and the suffix.
Now NVDA or sapi5 speech synthesis driver sends the page content to the
TTS engine as: "word[space or some other separator character]suffix",
when it should do send it as: "wordsuffix".
If somebody could tell me what is the separator character used in these
situations, this would be for help, as well.
Thanks in advance,
Veli
Quentin Christensen
Mar 29, 2026, 8:08:47 PMMar 29
to nvda-...@nvaccess.org
While I can't find a specification saying NOT to do that, it is generally best to have the whole word as the link. NVDA will, by default, report when you go in and out of the link, and even if you disable that in NVDA's document formatting settings, I don't think you can stop it from breaking at the start and end of the link.
If you can provide a couple of examples and a good use case, it would be worth writing up an issue at: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues
Kind regards
Quentin
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Quentin Christensen
Training and Support Manager
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Gene Asner
Mar 30, 2026, 12:10:47 AMMar 30
to nvda-...@nvaccess.org
If there is a one word link, that word will be on it's own line. You
can turn on use screen layout when supported which will cause links to
appear in terms of location just as though they are regular text. I
have the feature off because I want links to be separately shown, each
on it's own line. Words are generally not split by part of a word being
a link and part not.
If a web page is coded to divide a word in the middle to start a new
line, I know of no way to prevent that. It is the code that is telling
the browser to break the word, the screen-reader is doing nothing. As
far as I know, it is generally the browser that determines the length of
a line. While browse mode allows you to set how many characters browse
mode displays as one line, I don't recall seeing words split by this
feature.
As I understood the example given, the HTML code specifies that a line
be split in the middle of a word and that is a coding problem.
Gene
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can turn on use screen layout when supported which will cause links to
appear in terms of location just as though they are regular text. I
have the feature off because I want links to be separately shown, each
on it's own line. Words are generally not split by part of a word being
a link and part not.
If a web page is coded to divide a word in the middle to start a new
line, I know of no way to prevent that. It is the code that is telling
the browser to break the word, the screen-reader is doing nothing. As
far as I know, it is generally the browser that determines the length of
a line. While browse mode allows you to set how many characters browse
mode displays as one line, I don't recall seeing words split by this
feature.
As I understood the example given, the HTML code specifies that a line
be split in the middle of a word and that is a coding problem.
Gene
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> Quentin Christensen
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>
> NV Access
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>
> --
>
> Quentin Christensen
> Training and Support Manager
>
> NV Access
>
> Training: https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/ <https://www.nvaccess.org/shop/>
> Certification: https://certification.nvaccess.org/
> <https://certification.nvaccess.org/>
> Subscribe to email updates (blog, new versions, etc):
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> 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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John O'Regan
Mar 30, 2026, 11:13:59 AMMar 30
to nvda-...@nvaccess.org
Hi Veli,
There's an NVDA add-on called Links Management by Amir Soleimani
available from this GitHub site:
https://github.com/amirsol81/links-management/
The Overview section says:
Links Management is an opt-in NVDA add-on that improves Browse Mode
navigation when Screen Layout is turned off. When enabled, each link
behaves as a separate line for Up/Down arrow navigation. Trailing
punctuation is intelligently attached to the link line to prevent
blank or punctuation-only lines. Inspired by JAWS, this add-on
focuses on clarity, predictability, and navigation control.
I hope this is what you're looking for! :)
John
There's an NVDA add-on called Links Management by Amir Soleimani
available from this GitHub site:
https://github.com/amirsol81/links-management/
The Overview section says:
Links Management is an opt-in NVDA add-on that improves Browse Mode
navigation when Screen Layout is turned off. When enabled, each link
behaves as a separate line for Up/Down arrow navigation. Trailing
punctuation is intelligently attached to the link line to prevent
blank or punctuation-only lines. Inspired by JAWS, this add-on
focuses on clarity, predictability, and navigation control.
I hope this is what you're looking for! :)
John
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