HTML Element Inspector

Author: Amir Soleimani
NVDA compatibility: 2026.1 and later

HTML Element Inspector is a small inspection tool inspired by the “Element Information” feature in JAWS. It produces a compact, semantic report for the currently focused web element.

Shortcuts

• NVDA + Shift + F1 — Inspect the focused element.
• Control + NVDA + Shift + F1 — Advanced inspector report (includes child element exploration with heading navigation).

Version 1.1.0

• Added an Advanced inspector report (Control + NVDA + Shift + F1) with focused element details, landmark context, and optional child element exploration.
• Both Basic and Advanced reports support heading navigation (H / Shift+H) for faster structural review.
• Improved accessible name reporting with conservative source hints and added explicit-name-from when explicit-name=true, without guessing ARIA sources.
• Cleaner output by suppressing empty properties and reducing noise in ancestor elements.

Version 1.1.1

• Improved link reporting for anchor elements: when the link target is exposed as a URL value and no explicit href attribute is available, the report now shows it as href=... (conservative mapping for tag=a).
• Enhanced Advanced report navigation: each Tag X has Y parameters block inside the Focused element section is now rendered as a level 3 heading for fast H / Shift+H navigation between tag blocks.

Requirements

• Use it on web content while NVDA is in Browse mode (Virtual Buffer).
• This add-on does not copy anything to the clipboard; it only shows a report.

Browser testing

This add-on has been tested primarily with NVDA + Google Chrome. Firefox compatibility has not yet been fully verified.

What the report is built from

• NVDA object model (role, states, name/value/description when available)
• IA2 / Web attributes (tag, role/xml-roles, aria relationships, setsize/posinset, etc.)
• A short ancestor chain to provide context

Philosophy

• Semantic first: prefer meaningful attributes over raw noise.
• Conservative: avoid unsafe guessing (e.g. tabindex is only reported when explicitly exposed, except for role="tab" where it helps debugging roving tabindex patterns).
• Readable: stable formatting that is easy to compare with other tools.

Feedback and contributions

Feedback and contributions to improve this add-on are welcome.