@fastfinge Hmm, I daily drive remote and don't mind whether it's core or addon, but that feature alone is invaluable. Did it need to be core? Probably not. Is it better for it in my personal view? Possibly. Did the 2026.1 issue where, if your network wasn't ready in-time, you jus wouldn't fail to connect to a server cause me some problems? Yes. Could it have been solved if it was still an addon? Yes, with 3 minutes with Codex/<insert LLM here or programming knowledge if you're cooler than me> Core, I just didn't touch it. I waited and hoped it would get solved and 2026.1.1 might have solved it. I haven't rebooted recently to find out. Remote on the whole though, absolutely necessary. The rest of the article, no real comment. Haven't been adversely affected.
@FreakyFwoof I completely agree that it's required. But does that mean it should be in core? I dunno. Like I say, reasonable people can disagree. But I notice that Apple has started moving apps (apple sports, apple invites, etc) out of the main OS so they can maintain and update them seperatly.
@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof IMO, putting it in core just shows how unserious NV Access is about the enterprise market. If they go on like that, they won't be displacing JAWS anytime soon. We need a RedHat of accessibility technology, because NV Access clearly aint that.
@FreakyFwoof@miki The more remote connections a screen reader makes, and the more possibilities it provides for an outsider to take control of a corporate machine, the harder it is to get corporate security people to let you install it. Jaws tandem had to solve the same problem, though.
@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof@miki Remote is disabled by default, needs to be deliberately enabled, and is readily blocked by running NVDA in secure mode. Please explain how that is less secure than the similar offerings by other screen readers? Then tell me how those other screen reader can run while being completely blocked from the internet the way NVDA can if you don't trust it?
@FreakyFwoof@fastfinge Enterprises are deeply paranoid about software that can control your computer, and every screen reader can. If it lets employees install completely unapproved addons that run with screen reader permissions, and can potentially exfiltrate data to a random server somewhere, it's a no go. Especially if there's no vendor to take the blame if something goes wrong.
@miki@fastfinge OK this is interesting. @ednun_p uses it on his work machines and some of the stuff he does I believe it's fair to say is highly, highly sensitive. I wonder how that plays out in that case?
@miki@fastfinge@ednun_p Also companies could just block that port as many do, I'm sure tandem also has a blockable port as well, thus, no data going anywhere... Hopefully...
@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof@miki My company does disable that port inside their building but it seems not on wifi. I do agree though in principle if they new NVDA had it built into the core they probably wouldn't be happy. then again the other day I did try to unlock my machine remotely and it wouldn't let me. so something is going on to protect it clearly.
@ednun_p@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof@miki Once again, NVDA Remote is disabled by default, blocked by secure mode, and NVDA can run happily completely isolated from the internet. Company IT security have regularly been more than happy with that, but if you know anyone who isn't, please have them reach out to us - we can't address an issue we don't know about.
@miki@FreakyFwoof So wouldn't having it in core be better, in that case? That way remote access still works without employees having to install addons. Or would it be worse, because remote access now can't be disabled? I don't know enough about the corporate environment to know either way. But I'm starting to wonder if NVAccess does, either. This is my entire point: these decisions are hard, and require deep thought and deep study, both to make the best possible decision (there are no perfect decisions) and to understand how you got there.
@FreakyFwoof@miki Right, but I am the one who decides if it gets enabled or not. Once NVDA is installed, the corporate security people have no control over that. But NVDA does have a corporate mode that disables addons.
@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof Disabling addons is not an option if you do genuinely need some, for example to make some internal piece of software accessible, or even to give your employees a better speech synthesizer than what Microsoft offers by default. What they should be doing is a group policy option to control which addons can be used and from where. This would allow you to place the allowed addons in a directory that the user has no write permissions for. This doesn't fully solve the problem because your addons still need to be GPL and you need to ship source code, making it much harder to develop and sell expensive enterprise addons for extensive enterprise software, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
@miki@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof We're working on that. For now, your company can setup the add-ons they approve, and THEN set NVDA to run in secure mode. But yes, we are aware of the limitations of that and planning an improved corporate mode. Noe news on that yet though.
@miki@FreakyFwoof Yes, this is another factor. But once again: jaws tandem is built in. Why is NVDA remote different? Again, I'm not sure what I think here. But I do know that the question is complicated.
@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof Right, but it's Apple and we know that they will take care of those apps in due time. With the Remote add-on in particular, I mean the original Remote, it was oftentimes updated terribly late as if it had been ditched by its own devs altogether.
@amir@FreakyFwoof Could NVDA have taken over maintaining the addon, but not have made it part of core? That way, it could be updated separately from NVDA. Maybe that would have made maintaining it harder somehow? I don't know. To repeat myself again: "I'm probably missing context, so I'll just have to trust that NVAccess knows things I don't." That phrase is doing far too much work, I think.
@amir@FreakyFwoof And the idea that "We've never done it that way, because we don't do that, so it can't be done." is another alarming sign of shallow decision making. Also, NVDA has never moved an addon into core. So they're already doing things they've never done before.
@amir@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof Great discussion - anyone care to ask US why we brought NVDA Remote into core? No, ok carry on then....
(If anyone IS interested), as Samuel guessed in his article, it helps simplify the API and security bringing that into core and also allowing you to have it run on startup without allowing add-ons to run at login, etc, etc.)
@fastfinge@FreakyFwoof@amir If only there was someone you could ask about why NV Access has done things..... If only NV Access themselves were contactable and able to answer questions.....
