Hi.
I am using M3 MacBook Air and I will start studying in the Blind Institute of Technology soon. They encouraged me to try and be familiar with different screen readers. They recommended me to install NVDA. Can it be installed on Mac? If yes, then where I can find more information how to use it with a Mac.
Thanks in advance.
By Tarja, 19 April, 2024
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
I don’t think this can be done.
I am almost certain I saw a help article earlier this week saying VNDA isn’t compatible with ARM. Hopefully someone else can correct me but I’m pretty sure.
Accessibility
Ok, thanks, but if things are accessible for other screen readers then am I correct that they should be accessible for VoiceOver as well.
not always
not really. each screen reader is different. though yes, most things should work if they work for one, they should work for the other. or most of the time anyways. but sometimes you're going to find that a different screen reader will work slightly better for particular applications. NVDA should work on windows on arm, from what i have found out so far. you can't run NVDA on mac directly, simply because it's not designed for the mac operating system. but if you have an arm based copy of windows running as a VM, it should work on that.
NVDA can not be natively…
NVDA can not be natively installed to MacOs. You can set up windows in a virtual machine, via parallels, VM Ware or UTM for example and run NVDA there in a windows environment.
Since your mac is an M3, you'd need also Windows for ARM, but NVDA has no issues with that, it works fine on ARM windows.
Clarification.
I just realised, you might be asking if NVDA can run on an M3 mac running Mac OS, If that was the question then definitely not. NVDA doesn’t work on Mac OS at all. The only choice you have there at the present time is Voiceover. If you are trying to run Windows on your M3 mac then perhaps Serena was correct and it does work. I thought I saw a help article this week but as I said, I wasn’t sure. Again as Serena said, theres quite a bit of difference between screen readers. Very often one will work better than another for a given task or application. If you’re only running Mac OS though, you don’t really have any other option for the time being. You’ll have to find a way with Voceover. There are screen readers for Mac on the way but they aren’t here yet. Voiceover is a very capable and powerful screen reader for mac so you should be fine but just be aware that if you do run into problems, you can’t try another option to see if it has better luck as you would be able to on Windows.
Thanks, everyone
Thank you so much everyone. I think at the moment I won’t get Windows environment for my Mac so I will just use VoiceOver and see how it will go.
What class at BIT are you taking?
I have taken a number of courses at BIT.
And most of the people that I know that use a Mac are fairly successful with voiceover.
It depends on what course you were taking.
And if there’s anything I can do to assist you, I am more than happy to.
I am currently taking their digital accessibility analysis class But I have taken salesforce and project management from them as well.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you
Thanks @Dizno
I was thinking starting with digital accessibility.
You should have no issues
I have four weeks left in that class.
And the number of my fellow classmates are using a Mac.
You should have no issues at all. You might want to familiarize yourself with using Google Chrome.
Because most PC users will be using either Google Chrome Firefox or Microsoft edge
But otherwise I think you will be fine.
Good luck.
Google Chrome or Microsoft edge
Is installing Google Chrome or Microsoft edge easy and which one do you recommend more? I have no experience with them because I have been using only Safari.
Also, can you get your things done with native apps on MacBook or should I get additional apps like Microsoft office?
Thanks a lot. You have been very helpful.