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NVDA, the free and open source Screen Reader for Microsoft Windows
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NVDA & speakers/headphones: inconsistent/insufficient volume change announcements #15092

Open amirsol81 opened 1 year ago

amirsol81 commented 1 year ago

In short, NVDA announces volume changes for headphones/speakers, Bluetooth or wired, only when positioned on the Desktop.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Make sure a Bluetooth speaker/headphone is connected. Of course, a wired one is enough provided that it has multimedia keys to alter the volume.
  2. Move to the Desktop and press the volume buttons on the speaker/headphone. Do it a couple of times.
  3. Now move to anywhere other than the Desktop and do the same.

    Actual behavior:

    After the volume changes, NVDA announces the new volume percentage only when positioned on the Desktop and remains silent in other apps/environments.

    Expected behavior:

    Ideally - and like JAWS, NVDA should allow users to select whether they want the new volume percentage to be announced everywhere or not to be announced at all after pressing Volume Up/Down. JAWS has a setting which allows or blocks volume-related notification announcements. The current inconsistent NVDA behavior should clearly be altered.

    NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments:

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

Installed

NVDA version:

Alpha 28569, but this has affected all NVDA releases over the past 6 years or so.

Windows version:

Windows 11 Version 22H2 (OS Build 22621.1928), but it has affected Windows 8, 8.1 and 10.

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

Not software, but various speakers and headphones with multimedia keys tested.

Other information about your system:

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

Various versions backwards - 2017 and above over many years.

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

Yes

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

Haven't done so as it's not related.

amirsol81 commented 1 year ago

@Qchristensen As mentioned privately by a user, this is not limited to Bluetooth speakers or headphones. In fact, wired speakers/headphones are equally affected if they have multimedia keys. As such, I updated both the issue title and my comments to reflect that.

amirsol81 commented 1 year ago

@seanbudd This is a more general, non-Bluetooth issue - as reflected in the updated title/description. So it affects both Bluetooth and wired headphones/speakers.

CyrilleB79 commented 1 year ago

This issue has already been discussed in the past.

See #10626; it had been closed by its author who has not wished to follow the request; but there other persons were interested in it (e.g. see #13197).

For the background, see also older issues such as #5726, #13415.

My conclusion is that there is no consensus on if volume notifications should be reported or not. Thus, it should be made configurable, as done in Jaws. What is sure is that people logically expect to have the same notification type (or lack of thereof), no matter if they are in Explorer, on the desktop or in any other application. Users don't care if notifications are raised by Explorer; they are even not aware of it at all.

amirsol81 commented 1 year ago

@CyrilleB79 The point is that with newer releases of Windows 10 and all Windows 11 releases, we now have a solution for that. Like JAWS, NVDA should allow users to suppress them entirely or always hear them.