Accessibility: Installing NVDA on Linux

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NVDA is Free Software for screen reading that runs on Windows and is currently the most commonly used screen reader. You can install NVDA on Windows in GNOME-Boxes on Linux for no cost, which helps a lot to check Cockpit (and other web apps / web pages) in a screen reader.

Note: If you have a Windows installation on another computer (or VM), you can simply download & install NVDA & perform the optional steps below.

Instructions

1. Download Windows testing VM from Modern.IE

   1. select virtual machine:
      • Edge on Windows 10 "MSEdge on Win10 (x64) Stable" is a 9 GiB download
      • IE11 on Windows 7 is nearly half the size @ 4.9 GiB, but you won't have Edge and the selection of voices won't be as good — if you download this instead, I strongly recommend installing Firefox for a better NVDA experience
   2. select platform: VMware
   3. Click Download .ZIP

2. Extract .ZIP file

3. Run GNOME Boxes

4. Import VMDK

   1. navigate to extracted ZIP
   2. select VMDK file
   3. wait (get a coffee or tea; this takes a few minutes)

   alternatively, to skip step 1 & 2, you can run gnome-boxes filename.vmdk and GNOME Boxes will show its import dialog

5. Fix audio (related to GNOME-Boxes issue #78 — this will be fixed in Fedora 28 and higher)

   1. Shutdown Windows
   2. Run a command to change the soundcard from ac97 (unsupported in Windows 7+) to ich6 (supported in modern versions of Windows) — this requires libvirt-client to be installed:

      EDITOR="sed -ie 's/ac97/ich6/'" virsh edit boxes-unknown

   3. Start Windows again

   Note: Your VM might be called something different. Check virsh vol-list gnome-boxes to see if it's boxes-unknown or something else.

   Alternatively, you can use a USB sound card with Windows. This will have better performance and you won't need to run the virsh command above.

6. Download NVDA from https://www.nvaccess.org/download/ (you can search for "nvaccess")

   • It's fine to download the old version. It's not that old and it lets you skip the form.
   • For a newer version, you can skip donation, use a bogus email address, and unceck the keep me up to date option. (However, I'd suggest just downloading the old version.)

7. Install & run NVDA

8. Perform optional steps below

9. Take a snapshot.

   1. In GNOME-Boxes, select the menu icon in the top-right of the window
   2. Choose "properties"
   3. Visit the "Snapshots" tab
   4. Click the "+" icon to create a snapshot

Once you're done with the above (and some or all of the below), read The A11Y Project's getting started with NVDA.

Optional

Configure NVDA with a better voice. (Highly recommended)

1. After NVDA is running, press Ins+n
2. Choose "Preferences" → "Synthesizer…"
3. Select "Microsoft OnceCore"
4. Press Ins+n again
5. Choose "Preferences" → "Voice Settings…"
6. Pick a voice that sounds best to you — you're going to hear it a LOT when using the screen reader

Download Firefox (recommended)

NVDA + Firefox on Windows is the #1 combo for people with vision problems, as NVDA is free (and open source), Firefox is the most optimal browser for NVDA, and Windows comes by default on most computers. This is likely the same configuration people using screen readers with Cockpit will use.

1. Download Firefox from http://getfirefox.com/
2. Run the installer

Enable clipboard sharing and screen resizing

1. Install spice-guest-tools from https://www.spice-space.org/download.html
   • Direct link: https://www.spice-space.org/download/windows/spice-guest-tools/spice-guest-tools-latest.exe
   • You can search for "spice guest tools" in Edge and scroll halfway down the page until you see the first link under the "Windows binaries" heading
2. Restart Windows if your mouse is jittery