Audacity multi-track editor: accessibility enhancement - History

URL: https://blindgames.eu/other

Download:

• Current stable version: 4.0
• Previous stable Version: 3.6
• Development's versions

Sorry, but this document is an automatic translation from french language.

1. v4.0 (September/25/2026)

The add-on is now maintained by BlindGames (contact@blindgames.eu).

Compatibility:

• support of Audacity 4 (new Qt interface, program "Audacity4.exe"), checked with Audacity 4.0.0 and its default "Modern" workspace (see the chapter "Use with Audacity 4" of the user manual),
• Audacity 3.7.9 and the previous 3.7.x versions remain supported, NVDA 2025.1 to 2026.2.

With Audacity 4:

• the shell ("NVDA + space") and all its commands: playback position, selection, new command "d" for the duration of the selection, state of the playback, peak levels, playback volume and recording level, user manual and guide,
• automatic announcement of the new playback position and of the new selection after the cursor and selection keys, instead of the name of the action announced by Audacity,
• announcement of the digits and of the values when a time field is modified (the digits of Audacity 4 have no name), for all the time formats,
• announcement of the time fields in hours, minutes and seconds, "NVDA + upArrow" and "NVDA + windows + j" on these fields,
• the space bar presses the focused button of the toolbars (Audacity starts the playback otherwise),
• the peak levels are read from the Windows audio meters, the meters of Audacity 4 not being accessible,
• the controls are no longer announced as empty edit fields ("blank" after the arrow keys),
• the value of the sliders and its changes are announced,
• the false focus used by Audacity to have its announcements spoken (often on the "Home" button) is no longer announced.

2. v3.6 (September/25/2026)

This version is maintained and distributed from the add-on web page, the previous GitHub repositories being inactive.

Compatibility:

• compatibility with NVDA 2026.2 (NVDA versions prior to 2025.1 are not supported),
• compatibility with Audacity 3.7.9 and the previous 3.7.x versions: the object hierarchy used by the add-on has been checked against the real accessibility tree of Audacity 3.7.9,
• Audacity 4 (new Qt interface, program "Audacity4.exe") is not supported yet: the add-on now announces it once and disables its features for this application instead of failing silently.

News:

• support of the "seconds + milliseconds" time format,
• the digits of the "samples" and "hh:mm:ss + samples" formats are now correctly announced whatever the number of sample digits (millions of samples, project sample rate),
• the script reporting the playback speed announces that the "Play-at-Speed" toolbar is not displayed instead of failing (this toolbar is hidden by default since Audacity 3.4).

Bug fixes:

• the time controls of the "Timer Record" dialog were silent (missing call in the code),
• the time controls using a format not supported by the add-on (film, NTSC, PAL or CDDA frames) no longer raise errors: they are announced by NVDA without enhancement,
• the add-on no longer fails when the Audacity settings folder does not exist (portable installation),
• the "Pause" and "Play" buttons no longer raise an error when the transport toolbar cannot be found,
• the focus events are no longer lost on objects which are not IAccessible objects,
• the debug script bound to "alt+control+f10" has been removed.

Development:

• use of the public NVDA API to open the settings dialog (the private API is deprecated in NVDA 2026),
• the update check runs its network requests in a background thread, never disables the TLS certificate verification and no longer executes the downloaded update informations as Python code,
• the update check now queries the add-on web site (https://blindgames.eu/other/nvda-addons/) instead of the original author's GitHub repository; the update informations are a JSON file and the downloaded bundle is checked against its SHA-256 hash,
• the installed version is only removed after a successful installation of the update (NVDA 2026 no longer raises an exception on failure),
• the update check state is stored as JSON (PyYAML is not an NVDA dependency),
• the NVDA roles added by the add-on are restored when the application module is terminated, and can be installed again after a plugins reload,
• the add-on package no longer contains the documentation sources and the translation template.

3. v3.5 (July/22/2026)

Bug Fixes:

• checking for extension updates can be done now even if an SSL certificate error occurs.

Development:

• compliance with the NVAcess extension template (addonTemplate)
• removed the use of buildVars.py in the install.py module
• using yaml instead of pickle to manage update check state.

4. V3.4 (February/26/2026)

Compatibility with NVDA 2026.1.

NVDA versions prior to 2025.1 are no longer supported.

News:

• Addition of a script "NVDA+windows+j" to announce the duration contained in a time editing area.

Bogs corrections:

• Correction of the error that was podied when a recent file was imported.

Development:

• removal of code regarding NVDA versions lower than 2025.1.
• to display the "What's new" of a new version of the add-on, the "changes.html" document is no longer opened by "urlopen", but is downloaded, saved momentarily in the "appData\local\temp" folder and opened in the browser.
• taking into account the closure of the rawgit.com site for updating add-ons.
• use of json instead of pickle to store the add-on update status.

Compliance with the NVDA API:

• taking into account the movement of the NVDA version in the "buildVersion.py" module.

5. v3.3 (June/05/2025)

Compatibility with NVDA 2025.1.

NVDA versions prior to 2024.1 are no longer supported.

Compatibility with audacity 3.7.1. versions lower than version 3.5.1 and 32-bit versions are no longer supported.

Bug fixes:

• the update search is no longer done when the "Automatically search for updates" option is unchecked just after starting NVDA.

Development :

• when installing the extension, the current configuration is no longer saved in the extension folder but is now saved in the user configuration folder. This allows you to still keep the current configuration if an installation goes wrong.

Compliance with the NVDA API:

• Use of the "ExecandPump" method of the "Systemutils" module.
• Take into account the obsolescence of Gui.messagebox and Gui.message.messagebox, replaced by messagedialog:
  • Messagedialog is now used for all NVDA versions greater than 2025.1.

6. v3.2 (October/11/2024)

• compatibility with NVDA 2024.2, 2024.3 and 2024.4.
• compatibility and tests with Audacity 3.6.4 x64,3.6.2 x64 and 3.5.1 x64.
• upgraded the Audacity guide written by David Bailes.

7. v3.1 (March/23/2024)

Compatibility with NVDA 2024.1

What's new:

• taking into account the "Speech on demand" mode introduced in nvda 2024.1: all scripts announcing information will vocalize this information. In this mode, all other scripts will remain silent.

Bug Fixes:

• the radio button allowing you to choose the type of export (export the entire project, export of multiple files, etc.) is now accessible.

8. v3.0 (Nobember/23/2023)

New:

• naming toolbar panels into "lower panels" and "upper panel".
• naming of the panel containing the track view as "Main panel".

Changes:

• The scripts to announce the start, the end, the duration and the center of the selection are replaced by:
  • a script to announce the selection,
  • a script to announce the first time of the selection,
  • a script to announce the second time of the selection.
• in the documentation, the term group" for toolbars is replaced by "panel".
• the "Vocalization of Audacity digital time selection boxes" functionality is not available in versions 3.3.x of Audacity.

Compatibility:

• This version of the extension has been tested with Audacity 3.4, 3.4.2, 3.3.0 and 3.3.3. It should also be compatible with versions 3.3.1 and 3.3.2, but no testing has been done.
• Compatibility with versions prior to 3.3.0 is no longer supported.
• NVDA versions below 2022.1 are no longer supported.

9. v2.9 (August/03/2023)

• the audio position is no longer announced after restarting playback. This happened with Audacity versions 3.2.2 and above. In these versions, the state of the "play" and "pause" buttons is no longer available with MSAA), unlike previous versions.

10. v2.8 (February/14/2023)

• compatibility with audacity 3.2.3
• compatibility with NVDA 2023.1
• discontinuation of versions prior to audacity 3.0.

Changes:

• updating the Audacity guide for versions 3.2.3 ( see guide written by David Bell )

11. v2.7 (May/26/2022)

Bug fixes:

• replacement of curLang by getLanguage
• error when launching a script in the dialog that lists the command interpreter scripts.

Changes:

• updating the Audacity guide for versions 3.1.0 to 3.1.3 ( see guide written by David Bell https://vip.chowo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/jaws/Audacity-3.1.0- )

12. v2.6 (02/04/2022)

• Compatibility with NVDA 2022.1
• reset the configuration in the event of errors in the configuration file.

Changes:

• during an automatic update of the add-on, it no longer asks the user if he wants to keep the current configuration parameters of the add-on.
• during a manual installation of the add-on, a confirmation request is requested when the user has chosen not to keep the current settings of the add-on configuration.

13. v2.5 (12/01/2021)

• Compatibility with NVDA 2021.3
• removed the warning message indicating that the extension has not been tested with the version of Audacity used.

14. v2.4.1 (06/25/2021)

Adding turkish translation

15. v2.4 (06/18/2021)

• Compatibility with NVDA 2021.1. Versions of NVDA prior to 2019.3 are not supported.
• removal of the code concerning Python 2.7.
• compatibility with audacity 3.0.2.

16. v2.3 (08/04/2021)

Compatibility with Audacity 3.0

17. v2.2 (18/12/2020)

• compatibility with NVDA 2020.4
• addition of the "View history" button in the "Update" category of the add-on's parameters.

18. v2.1 (27/10/2020)

• compatibility with NVDA 2020.3
• code cleaning (corrections of errors detected by Flake8)
• addition of the "What's new" button in the dialog proposing the installation of a new update.

19. Version 2.0 (01/08/2020)

Compatibility with audacity 2.4.2 and 2.4.1.

• compatibility with NVDA 2020.2
• adding option to desactivate enhanced announcement of edit spin boxes.
• parameters dialog with category.
• code modified for searching object based on controlID

20. Version 1.4.5 (19/05/2020)

Bugs's correction:

• bad support of audacity 2.3.2 version.

21. Version 1.4.4 (11/05/2020)

Adding turkish translation

22. Version 1.4.3 (08/05/2020)

Bug corrections:

• bad detection of Transport tools bar.
• error when timer in Speed change dialog gains focus.

23. Version 1.4.2.1 (06/04/2020)

Adding arabic translation

24. Version 1.4.1 (03/04/2020)

updating of history of add-on's changes.

25. Version 1.4 (03/04/2020)

• compatibility with NVDA 2020.1,
• compliance for NVDA extension compatibility test

26. v1.3 (01/10/2019)

-Compatibility with NVDA 2019.3.

• adding automatic update check.
• correction of the documentation.
• translation of the addon in Spanish by Rémy Ruiz, changes by Gunther Melendez.

27. v1.2 (01/06/2019)

• Modification of manifest.ini file for compatibility with NVDA 2019.2.0.

28. v1.1 (16/03/2019)

• Modification of manifest.ini file for compatibility with NVDA 2019.1.0.
• code changes for compatibility with python 3.

29. v1.0.2 (28/12/2018)

Correction of bad announcement of selection.

30. v1.0.1 (22/12/2018)

Small documentation correction.

31. v1.0 (20/12/2018)

• version number restarted to 1.0 cause of name change,
• compatibility with Audacity 2.3.0,
• the scripts of "shell scripts display" dialog are listed with possibility to run selected script,
• improvement of the accessibility of the edit boxes of the time in the "timer Recording" dialog,
• major overhaul of the code.

32. v3.2 (19/06/2018)

• compatibility with NVDA 2018.2,
• settings management on installation or uninstallation (adding install.py file),
• clean-up and repackaging of code.

33. v3.1 (07/01/2018)

• addon modified to be in the addon template form and stored in git hub repository.

34. v3.0.1 (04/01/2018)

• settings addon menu bug fix,
• adding future directive for python 3 compatibility.

35. v3.0 (11/2017)

• compatibility with Audacity 2.2.0, new - scripts to announce the peak meters and sliders for playback or recording,
• new scripts to announce the duration and the position of the center of the selection,
• restriction of the use of certain scripts to the tracks view conformémant to the documentation,
• implementation of the command interpreter,
• implementation of an interceptor of keyboard keys as a replacement to the watchdog,
• implementation of a configuration file,
• structuring the module to the repository on github.
• update the user manual.

36. v2.3 (08/2017)

• script "alt+control+f4" to activate or deactivate the announcement of the selection changes,
• compatibility with audacity v2.1.3,
• resumption of the code.

37. v2.2 (06/2015)

• restructuring of the code

38. v2.1 (10/2014)

• compatibility with NVDA 2014.3
• compatibility with Audacity v2.06

39. v2.0 (05/2014)

• establishment of a supervisory field position and selection to announce the changes.

40. v1.0 (01/2014)

Creation of the add-on