NVDA Community Addons/ addons/ Time Zoner

Time Zoner

  • Author: Munawar Bijani
  • Download stable version
  • NVDA compatibility: 2019.2.1 and later

An add-on for NVDA to announce the time in selected timezones.

Introduction

For a very long time now, Windows has had the ability to show multiple clocks from different timezones. Users can customize the clocks and they become instantly visible.

Unfortunately, for users of screen readers such as NVDA or JAWS, there is no simple way to get this information. These screen readers don't support additional clocks, so blind computer users have to resort to other, third-party solutions, some of which are paid.

A lot of the work I do involves working across timezones, and eventually I got tired of manually converting times in my head, especially for timezones that aren't aligned to the hour (such as India which is +5:30 UTC).

For these reasons, I've created this add-on for NVDA. The add-on lets you hear times in selected timezones through the use of the timezone ring.

Usage

The add-on supports both the legacy and the Python 3 version of NVDA.

Once the add-on is installed, press NVDA+N to bring up NVDA's context menu. Arrow down to "Preferences" and then up to "Time Zoner".

Press ENTER on "Configure timezone ring".

You will be presented with a dialog to set the timezones for which you want the time and date announced.

Select items in the timezone list to add them to your timezone ring. Deselect (or press the Remove button) to delete them from the ring.

You can also reorder the timezones in the ring by using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

Use the "Filter" box to search for specific timezones.

Check the "Announce abbreviated timezones" box to hear abbreviated timezone names such as IST or GMT. Uncheck the box to hear the full timezone names such as Asia/Kolkata or Europe/London.

When you are finished configuring the timezones, press the Save button.

From here on, you can press NVDA+Alt+T to announce times and dates in your timezone ring.

When you first install the add-on, NVDA will default to your local timezone if it can get it.

Change Log

Version 1.03, released on 03/21/2020

  • The add-on no longer crashes if the default timezone can't be set.
  • Fixed an issue with relative links in the documentation.

Version 1.02, released on 03/18/2020

  • When installing a new version of this add-on, the settings from a previous installation are no longer lost.
  • Other changes to conform to NVDA add-on standard compliance.

Version 1.01, released on 03/12/2020

  • The time and date are announced in the user's locale, meaning that 24-hour time is honored if set.
  • NVDA will announce either the abbreviated or full timezone depending on the user's setting in the Timezone Ring dialog. For example, it will either say Europe/London, or it will say GMT or BST. This setting is controlled by checking or unchecking the "Announce abbreviated timezones" checkbox.
  • Add-on includes translator comments (@ruifontes).
  • Add-on now includes header comments (@ruifontes).
  • The Escape key closes the Timezone Ring dialog (@ruifontes).
  • The menu item to open the Timezone Ring dialog is now named appropriately (@ruifontes).
  • NVDA now defaults to the local timezone on installation of this add-on, if the local timezone is available.
  • Support for multiple timezones through the use of a timezone ring.
  • This add-on now uses the key NVDA+Alt+T to prevent conflict with the Clock add-on.
  • The timezone selector dialog now has a filter box. NVDA will announce the number of results as the user starts typing into the filter field.
  • Python 2 support
  • The date and time is now announced in a separate thread to prevent hanging the NVDA thread in case retrieval takes a little while.
  • The timezone selector dialog now has a Cancel button and no longer prevents NVDA from shutting down.