Nao - NVDA Advanced OCR

Nao (NVDA Advanced OCR) is an addon that improves the standard OCR capabilities that NVDA provides on modern Windows versions. While NVDA standard command uses Windows OCR to recognize the screen, NAO is able to make the OCR on files saved on your hard drive or USB devices. Use NVDA-Shift-R to recognize any sorts of images and pdf! Simply put the focus / cursor on the file you desire, don't open it, but hit NVDA-Shift-r. The document will be recognized and a simple text window will appear, allowing you to read the entire content, save it, find text or copy content to clipboard. Nao is able to handle also multipage pdf, so if you have a not accessible document, don't worry, Windows OCR will be able to make the entire work.

System Requirements

The addon works on Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems, since they have OCR capabilities builtin. Nao is compatible from NVDA version 2019.3, so don't use older versions of the screen reader. Note that Nao works with Windows Explorer, on desktop, with Total Commander or xplorer² filemanager; don't use other software like 7zip or Winrar, since they are not supported.

Features and commands

Note that you can customize shortcuts of Nao simply from the input gestures dialog of NVDA. Open NVDA menu, go to preferences, and from that submenu select input gestures dialog. Remember that this feature is not global, but it works only where Nao can make an ocr. So gestures will appear only if you are in the desktop, or in file explorer, Total Commander or Xplorer.

You can also abort a long Ocr process simply pressing "Cancel" from the progress bar window; this window also gives you information about the state of the OCR, updating informations every 5 seconds. You can configure how to receive progress bar information with the standard NVDA-u command.

You can find a submenu named Nao, under the NVDA - Tools - menu. For the moment it contains only an item that allow you to make a donation, but we will improve that with new features!

Support and donations

Nao is absolutely free. Anyway, please remember that this addon is made during spare time of developers. We'd appreciate any contribute that you could give us! If you think our work is good and improve your life, a Consider to make a donation.

Do you want to report a bug, suggest new features, translate the addon in your language? We have the email for you! Just write to support@nvda-nao.org and we will be happy to help you.

History

2022.1.2

2022.1.1

2022.1

2021.2

2021.1