NVDA is a free, open-source screen reader for Windows, made by NV Access, and more people reach for it than for anything else. That comes from WebAIM's survey, which is the closest thing this field has to a headcount. On the commonly-used measure NVDA leads at 65.6%, and on the narrower question of which one people name as their primary it sits second at 37.7%, just behind JAWS. Cost is not the headline reason people give, which is the thing most write-ups get wrong. Asked why they use their main screen reader, respondents put existing comfort and expertise first at 45.8%, features second, availability third, and cost fourth at 9.2%. That question covered every screen reader at once rather than this one, so read it as what moves the field. What being free changes is who gets to use a screen reader at all. NVDA also carries the highest satisfaction of any measured, at 97.6%. And the geography inverts. It leads JAWS in Europe, and across Asia and across Africa and the Middle East it runs at around 70% primary usage.
In practice
It is the practical first screen reader for a team, and the reason is availability rather than price. Anybody on Windows can install it in a couple of minutes, and it runs from a USB stick with no installation at all, which is worth knowing on a machine you are not allowed to install on. Check what the portable copy gives up before you rely on it, because NV Access documents the limits. It cannot read the Windows sign-in or the other secure screens, and a managed environment may not let you run it either. Six commands are enough for a useful first pass. Start it, silence it, read the next item, list the headings, list the links, and move between headings.
It pairs most often with Chrome and then Firefox, and those two combinations are the second and fourth most common in real use. Testing with it alone is still a compromise the users themselves do not make, since 71.6% of them use more than one screen reader and 43% use three or more.
One source of confusion worth knowing about. NVDA has an add-on ecosystem, and add-ons change behaviour, so two testers running what they both call NVDA can get different results. Note the version and the add-ons in a defect report the way you note the browser.
Why it matters
Being free removes the last excuse for not testing, and the case for it runs further than that. The people who use it rate it higher than users of any other screen reader rate theirs. And 94% of them say free screen readers are a viable alternative to paid ones, against 78.1% of respondents overall. So this is not the budget option everybody tolerates. Where your customers are should still decide your matrix, because JAWS leads two to one in North America and NVDA leads three to one across Asia. Test where your customers are.
Why to start here
Free, on Windows, installable in a couple of minutes, and runnable from a USB stick where installing is not an option. That combination is why a whole team can have it by the end of an afternoon, and a whole team finding its own bugs beats one consultant finding them later.
Where this shows up on the site
Related terms
- JAWSJAWS is the long-established commercial screen reader for Windows, made by Freedom Scientific, and the one named most often when people are asked which screen reader they use first.
- VoiceOverVoiceOver is Apple's screen reader, built into every Mac, iPhone and iPad, and into the Apple Watch, Apple TV and Vision Pro as well.
- NarratorNarrator is Microsoft's screen reader, and what matters about it is the shape of its use rather than its feature list.
- Screen readerA screen reader is software that reads the screen out loud, or sends it to a braille display, for people who cannot see it.
- Assistive technologyAssistive technology is hardware or software that gives a person with a disability more than a mainstream browser offers on its own.
- Manual testingManual testing is a person working through a page against the rules a machine cannot decide.
- Browse modeBrowse mode is the state a Windows screen reader sits in while somebody reads your page, and forms mode is the state it switches into when they type.
Knowing the word is the easy part.
Find out where your own site stands. The free scan checks 10 pages in a real browser against all 90 supported automated rules, separates 27 best-practice checks from its WCAG findings, and names the rule behind every result.