Say hello (or welcome back) to AudioScreen add-on
joseph....@gmail.com
Hello NVDA community,
I’m delighted to announce the long-awaited return of AudioScreen add-on, now upgraded with NVDA 2025.x support!
Originally created by NV Access, AudioScreen add-on allows you to hear image information under your finger on touchscreen devices or when moving the mouse. With AudioScreen, you will hear pitch/stereo variation as you move around an image or a diagram, or listen to pitch changes as you review a color image of photographs. This add-on is most useful on touchscreens as you can move your finger across the screen and listen to pitch changes as you move around an image.
The last update to AudioScreen add-on was made in late 2010’s. After reading a thread on X (formerly Twitter) on reviving this add-on, the add-on was revived in 2025 under a temporary stewardship of yours truly (Joseph Lee). With the 2025.1.x releases (now available on the add-on store), you can enjoy AudioScreen add-on once again, now modernized to support NVDA 2025.x features.
But that’s not all: currently AudioScreen is a 32-bit add-on, meaning that it will not work when using a future 64-bit NVDA release. But worry no more: work is under way to release a 64-bit NVDA compatible AudioScreen add-on in the near future. If you happen to browse dev channel add-ons, you will see early work on it (2025.1.100) from the add-on store.
A few things to note:
- I am temporarily maintaining AudioScreen add-on and am looking for a more permanent solution. This may involve getting the work I did submitted to NV Access (after all, AudioScreen came from NV Access, so it makes sense to give it back to the organization unless someone else wants to maintain it).
- 64-bit NVDA builds are being generated alongside 32-bit alpha snapshot builds. While 64-bit NVDA works somewhat, some features are missing. More on that later.
- AudioScreen uses a third-party Python library available in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants. For add-ons like AudioScreen, work must be done to make them compatible with 64-bit NVDA. This is one of the reasons why you should ask add-on authors about benefits and risks of overriding compatibility whenever a year.1 stable release comes to your computers, and it will be more important to do it when a year.1 NVDA release is 64-bit only. Put it the other way, some NVDA add-ons are 32-bit only, and without contacting add-on authors (or known maintainers) who may work on 64-bit compatibility, they will fail when enabled on 64-bit NVDA releases. More on this point at a later time.
Enjoy the revived AudioScreen add-on!
Cheers,
Joseph
David Ouimet
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2025 11:54 AM
To: nv...@nvda.groups.io <nv...@nvda.groups.io>
Subject: [NVDA] Say hello (or welcome back) to AudioScreen add-on
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joseph....@gmail.com
Hi,
It will work with mouse as long as you move the mouse (the mouse itself or via keyboard). I do have a touchscreen computer, but due to an issue with the Windows Insider build I am using, I used a mouse to test the add-on.
Cheers,
Joseph
Andrew Downie
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joseph....@gmail.com
Hi all,
Update: NV Access has officially confirmed that they are not maintaining AudioScreen add-on. As I am maintaining and modernizing it temporarily, I would like to request a more permanent solution from the community (a discussion reserved for NVDA Add-ons list).
Cheers,
Joseph
From: nvda-...@nvaccess.org <nvda-...@nvaccess.org> On Behalf Of Andrew Downie
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2025 5:46 PM
To: nvda-...@nvaccess.org
Subject: Re: [NVDA] Say hello (or welcome back) to AudioScreen add-on
Joseph very exciting news. The release of the original Audioscreen encouraged me to learn to write SVG code sufficient to produce some basic graphs etc. I believe the concept has much potential.
Andrew
jacob kruger
My other standard means/method of using it is to use navigator object traversing of object treevview to focus on a specific item, and then invoke it's option to play image of current navigator object/item, but this is more of a once-off quick scan/review.
Jacob Kruger
"Resistance is futile...acceptance is versatile..."
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/009801dc2a6b%2493afc6f0%24bb0f54d0%24%40gmail.com.