Problems with VoiceOver on macOS Sonoma, and NVDA

I mentioned this a little while ago in the Using IntelliJ with a Screen Reader thread, but didn't get a reply and now I'm getting an error trying to update it, so having to start again.

But I am finding using PyCharm/WebStorm almost impossible now I've upgraded to Sonoma, and it's no better in 14.1.  This has forced me to try moving to WIndows with NVDA but it's also not without its problems.

The main problem is that I just can't reconcile what code is in the editor.  It's taking pretty much all my brain power just to figure out what words are there, which means there is little left for actually solving the actual code problems.

So on the Mac my main issues are:

1. When I switch documents, moving up and down a line doesn't read the full line out, it just reads the character or word the cursor is on.  I need to restart VoiceOver to fix it.  Which I have to do every single time I change document.  This was always an occasional problem, but in Sonoma it is virtually every time.

2. When using option+left/right to move the cursor by word, the behaviour is extremely erratic, particularly where punctuation is concerned.
VoiceOver has 2 options - speak the text the cursor passes and speak the text to the right of the cursor.  This option totally changes how option+left/right works.

If speaking text the cursor passes is selected, VoiceOver will regularly speak out double the words that are there.  This This is really if there is punctuation, which of course there always is when coding.
I notice this a lot with dots.  So if my cursor is at the start of a line beginning "one.two" and I press option+right it says "one period two" but my cursor is actually on the dot.  Press it again and it speaks "one period two" again.
Similarly with function definitions it will speak the brackets and commas multiple times.  It is incredibly confusing and try as I might I just can't figure out what code is actually there.  I use option+left and right as my primary way of navigating a line of code.

My typing isn't great anyway, so in combination with PyCharm helpfully adding extra things in for me, I can often find myself with code that doesn't work because there is an extra or missing bracket or apostrophe or something.  It is now about 10 times harder to find the culprit than it was previously.

If speaking text to the right, then VoiceOver will often speak out a word plus punctguation and then move the cursor down to the next line.  If I option+left it then steps through each symbol and word as I would expect.

I tried this approach for a bit as it's closer to how Windows works, but honestly it is just as confusing if not more so.

3. A lesser issue but still annoying is that it is now more difficult to switch to tool windows.  For example, with the problems view I pres command+6 and hear "view options".  If I press vo+right I get "tree".  Now I may be able to go up and down the list of problems, but likely not.  Pressing vo+right I get "tree" again.  And basically I go backwards and forwards between the two trees until one of them works.  With the run window I can no longer jump to table so have to navigate over every single button - of which there are a lot - to get anywhere.

Using tab instead of vo keys to get to the problems pane is a little better, but this is all new behaviour since Sonoma.  although I have been upgrading PyCharm as and when updates come out.

I've not written much code with NVDA on WIndows as it's taking me a long time to get my environment setup again.  (And I don't remember it being this slow last time I used Windows.)

Firstly, I should say the new notifications are awesome as they now work in Windows!

So I've not come across as many problems yet.  But I have noticed that I am getting phantom words.  I've only noticed it in one place so far.  It was in a yaml document, something like:

Name: one-two-three-four

If I control+right from the start of the line I get "Name colon".  My cursor is after the colon.  If I press control and right again I get "name colon" a second time, but I'm not sure the cursor has moved.  If I press it a third time, I get "one dash", again and it's "two dash" but if I press it a again I get "two dash" again.

This makes me wonder if some of the bad behaviour on the Mac might be caused by something odd the editor is doing.

The other problem I've found is that there seems to be a lot of things that aren't accessible using NVDA.  This might be my ignorance as I'm basically using tab, shift+tab and arrow keys.

For example, the search/replace popup has always had erratic focus on the Mac, but I can use it.  On Windows I was never able to get to the replace button.  Also trying to enter in text into the replace text box was really confusing - it kept telling me the box was empty but then ctrl+a and I could hear what I'd typed.  And the options like use regular expression didn't seem to be usable.

And buttons like Commit and Commit and Push didn't seem to work when I pressed enter or space on them, although I could use the keyboard shortcuts.

Also I couldn't figure out how to use the Edit Configuration window.  This works fine on the Mac, but with NVDA I couldn't really navigate anywhere.

I should say I am on the latest Macos Sonoma (14.1) and on an up to date Windows 11 with the latest NVDA.  PyCharm is up to date on both (2023.2.3 I think)

The frustrating thing is that PyCharm has come along so much since I started dabbling with a screen reader.  The cursor movement was always a little erratic, but now it's just impossible.  I'm finding this so difficult I have started thinking about whether I can continue my job.  But it's also a problem that seems to fall between the cracks.  Sonoma definitely introduced these problems but I've no idea if it's an Apple thing or a Jetbrains thing.  So I don't know how I am supposed to get these issues fixed.

I should also say on the Mac that I've not really noticed the same problems elsewhere, although I can reproduce a similar problem where VoiceOver reads things twice in Safari's location bar.  But nothing as extreme as what I am seeing in PyCharm.

I thought I'd put this in the InteiJ forum as it also occurs in WebStorm so pretty sure it's not PyCharm specific.