Tony Gebhard

Quick post today because things are moving FAST with NVDA Coach and I want to keep you all in the loop.
What’s Happening Right Now
I’m in the middle of a 2-day training module with a group of assistive technology specialists and teachers — and it’s been an absolute blast. We’re going deep: hands-on time with NVDA Coach, working through the screen reader fundamentals, exploring the sandbox environments, and really pressure-testing the add-on in real instructional scenarios.
These aren’t casual users. These are professionals who work daily with blind and low-vision learners, and their feedback is gold. Every session is generating mountains of data and observations that are going straight into the V1.4 development pipeline. The kind of real-world, classroom-level insight you just can’t manufacture — you have to go get it.
The Focus: Building for Instructors, Not Just Learners
One of the biggest themes coming out of these sessions is the instructor experience. Right now NVDA Coach is primarily built around the learner journey — the 10-lesson curriculum, the gesture detection, the spoken feedback loop. And that’s solid. But what teachers keep asking for is ownership.
They want to build their own lessons. They want to tailor content to their students, their regions, their contexts. And honestly? That’s exactly where this thing needs to go.
So here’s what I can say about V2.0: we’re actively exploring an instructor custom environment — a space where teachers can author and deploy their own lessons for students learning NVDA. Couple that with the sandbox environments already in the pipeline, and you’re looking at a genuinely flexible platform for screen reader education. More details as the design solidifies, but the excitement is real.
Global Reach: Language Support and Translators
Big shoutout to Valentin Kupriyanov for the Russian localization of NVDA Coach — that was a huge moment. But we’re not stopping there. We’re actively recruiting translators across different language communities to expand support globally, and the next major language focus is Spanish.
This matters to me personally. Spanish speakers represent one of the largest and most underserved communities in the blindness and low-vision space when it comes to accessible, affordable AT training tools. We want NVDA Coach to actually work for them — not just be technically “in Spanish” but be culturally grounded and genuinely useful.
Heading to South America This Summer
This summer I’m planning to travel to South America to meet directly with tech instructors and blindness specialists. I want to hear firsthand what their students need, how NVDA is being used in their communities, and what barriers exist that we haven’t even thought about from here in the States. Getting to know the culture closely, building relationships, and understanding local needs at a human level — that’s how you build something that actually works across the globe.
It’s not just a research trip. It’s a relationship trip. And I can’t wait.
Stay Connected
If you’re an AT professional, a teacher of the visually impaired, a translator, or someone who just cares about making screen reader education more accessible — I want to hear from you. NVDA Coach is a community project and the more perspectives we bring in, the better it gets.
Drop me a message. Let’s build this thing together.
Stay groovy.
— Tony