NVDA Helper

Parts of NVDA Helper are used to capture and cache information, in-process, within web browsers and other applications. This cache is called a virtual buffer. While virtual buffers apply to several different application types, it may first be easiest to think about how they work with browsers, the rest of this document will take a web browser centric view unless specified otherwise.

Configuring Visual Studio

The following steps won't prepare a buildable solution, but it will enable intellisense. You should still build on the command line to verify errors.

• Ensure you have built NVDA on the command line first.
• Create a new project from existing code
• Type: Visual C++
• Set the <repo root>/nvdaHelper/ directory as the project file location.
• Project name: "nvdaHelper"
• Add files to the project from these folders: checked.
• Other defaults are fine
• Includes: ../include;../miscdeps/include;./;../build\x86_64;%(AdditionalIncludeDirectories)
• Defines: WIN32;_WINDOWS;_USRDLL;NVDAHELPER_EXPORTS;UNICODE;_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE;LOGLEVEL;_WIN32_WINNT;_WIN32_WINNT_WIN7;
• Force Includes: winuser.h
• Create the project.
• Open the project settings and change the following:
  • General -> Windows SDK: 10.0.17763.0 (or whatever is the latest on your system)
  • C/C++ -> Language -> C++ Language Standard -> ISO C++14 Standard (/std:c++14)

Virtual Buffer Backends

This code runs within the target applications process, it is responsible for building the virtual buffer. The base classes are in the storage.h and storage.cpp. The storage classes are implementation agnostic, they don't use the accessibility APIs directly and thus don't have the same performance concerns as the code that directly interacts with the accessibility APIs, such as the code in gecko_ia2.cpp. A buffer (VBufStorage_buffer_t) has many Nodes that make up the document. The VBufStorage_buffer_t class owns the *Node instances, such as controlFieldNode and textFieldNode. The buffer (VBufStorage_buffer_t) is responsible for creating (in fillVBuf) and caching the nodes that make up the document. An element in a HTML document becomes a controlFieldNode. The inner text of a HTML element would become a textFieldNode. Extra information that we want to be able to present to the user is collected as these nodes are created. For instance the name, description, role, and many other pieces of information. A Node has a pointer to its parent node, child nodes, and sibling nodes, we have a graph of the virtual buffer. Each controlFieldNode (like an element, remember?) has an identifier (VBufStorage_controlFieldNodeIdentifier_t). Given an identifier, a controlFieldNode can be looked up using controlFieldNodesByIdentifier. Though, take care, looking up nodes is only possible after that part of the tree has been rendered. The controlFieldNodes are added to the buffer via addControlFieldNode, which also adds these nodes to the map.

Gecko IA2

This is a virtual buffer backend implementation used for Firefox and Chrome. When fillVBuf is called, it recursively descends through the child elements that we care about, creating either controlFieldNodes or textFieldNodes for them. This code is responsible for interacting with the IA2 accessibility API, these calls should be minimised for performance reasons.