@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@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@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.
