HooVDA

HooVDA is an independent, Linux-native screenreader runtime written in Go for deterministic browser accessibility testing. It consumes real Chromium AT-SPI objects and physical X11 keyboard events. It exposes structured speech, braille, focus, mode, live-region and audio evidence to test harnesses.

HooVDA is independent software. It is not NVDA and is not affiliated with NV Access. The immutable nvda-web-2026.1.1 profile is a behavior-compatibility target backed by pinned public system-test assertions, not an NVDA binary, source port, or fork.

Locked-profile release gate

hoovda conformance now passes the seven-case declared corpus. Reference expectations come from pinned official NVDA 2026.1.1 system-test assertions and one source-level live-region contract; this repository contains no Windows runtime, recorder, VM, Wine integration, NVDA executable, or copied NVDA source.

The conformance manifest pins the upstream release commit, capture tool, source file, source test and assertion plus each fixture, expected reference trace, and observed HooVDA trace by SHA-256. de-DE cases also pin NVDA's official localization catalog. A case passes only when command, ordered speech, ordered braille, and mode match at every asserted step; raw HooVDA evidence must name the exact physical gesture and Linux Chromium/AT-SPI capture boundary. Each trace must contain every output channel declared by its tags. All four locale/layout cells are mandatory. Missing files, changed hashes, path escapes, symlink escapes, unknown fields, incomplete coverage, unsubstantiated feature tags, or any trace mismatch fail closed. See oracle/README.md.

Known parity gaps remain: math, complex embedded content, browser edge cases, and exact speech or braille parity lack complete reference coverage. Character, word, line and find navigation use a Unicode-rune cursor. Elements-list summary, find-next/find-previous, automatic focus mode, report-details, table headers and spans are implemented. Logical NVDA-style braille buffer text is kept separate from Liblouis-translated display cells. Linux/amd64 Chromium and en-US/de-DE are the only declared targets. The passing corpus proves only its declared browser cases. Current code remains a compatibility subset, not full NVDA parity.

Local development

make generate
make test
make build
./bin/hoovda doctor

Runtime:

dbus-run-session -- env \
  DISPLAY=:99 \
  HOOVDA_CONTROL_TOKEN=development-only \
  ./bin/hoovda serve

Locked profile

• HooVDA profile: nvda-web-2026.1.1
• accessibility API: AT-SPI 2.60.1 XML contract
• transport: github.com/godbus/dbus/v5 5.2.2
• speech synthesis: eSpeak NG 1.52 through external driver process
• braille translation: Liblouis 3.38.0 through external driver process
• locales: en-US, de-DE
• target: Linux/amd64 Chromium website content and stock browser chrome

The runtime image includes exact source archives and license texts for pinned AT-SPI, eSpeak NG, and Liblouis builds. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.