Transcript: RSS Quick tour, with NVDA
Times are positions in RSSQuick-audio-tour-NVDA-v1.mp3; a demo's time is where its audio starts, after the chime.
Demo lines are the text the screen reader sent to its voice, from its own log. A following key can cut an utterance short, so a line here may be longer than what is heard.
Welcome (0:00)
Michael: Welcome to a guided tour of RSS Quick. I'm Michael.
River: And I'm River. RSS Quick is a free news reader for Windows, built first for people who use a screen reader, a braille display, or just the keyboard. In the next quarter of an hour or so, we'll get it from the Microsoft Store, install it, and read some news with it.
Michael: Here's how this works. Every demo you'll hear is real: the real Microsoft Store and the real RSS Quick, running on a Windows test machine, with NVDA reading them. NVDA is the free screen reader from NV Access, and it's on its out-of-the-box settings, with the standard Windows voice. We're AI voices, but NVDA isn't. A script pressed the keys, and we recorded exactly what NVDA said. Afterwards we added a soft click so you can hear each key press, evened out the volume, and shortened the long pauses. NVDA's words weren't changed.
River: And the test machine is online, so the headlines you'll hear are whatever the news sites were publishing when we recorded.
What an RSS reader is for (1:03)
Michael: If you've never used one, a quick word about what an RSS reader does. Most news sites and blogs publish a feed: a plain list of their latest headlines, with a link to each story. A feed reader collects those lists for you.
River: So instead of visiting ten websites, each with its own menus and adverts and pop-ups, you get one list of headlines in one simple window. When you find a story you want, it opens in your own web browser, where your screen reader already knows its way around.
Michael: RSS Quick keeps it to two panels: your feeds on the left, in folders, and the headlines of whatever you've opened on the right. That's it. No account, no tracking, and nothing stored about you. Headlines are fetched fresh every time.
Getting it from the Microsoft Store (1:48)
River: Let's get it. We've opened the Microsoft Store. We had to: a script can't press the Windows key. From here it's all the keyboard. Control E goes to the Store's search box. We'll type RSS Quick and press Enter, then tab to the first result and press Enter to open its page.
[Demo, 2:03, logged] Search grouping Search edit blank 1 suggestion 8 suggestions 8 suggestions 8 suggestions RSSQuick User profile button Results updated. “RSS Quick” WinStore.UX.Controls.FilterDropDownPane grouping “RSS Quick” grouping Filters toggle button not pressed All departments toggle button pressed 1 of 3 RSSQuick. Free button 1 of 40 unknown Get button
Michael: NVDA read the search box, the number of suggestions as we typed, and then the results page. Two presses of tab took us past the filters to the first result: RSS Quick, free, one of forty. Enter opened its page, and focus landed right on the Get button.
River: It's listed in the Store as RSSQuick, all one word, but searching with a space finds it. Now we press Enter on Get, and wait.
[Demo, 2:52, logged] unavailable Share button Getting ready Preparing to download Installing (2%) Installing (75%) Share button Open button
Michael: And that's the install. Getting ready, preparing to download, then installing, with the percentage as it went, and then focus landed on a new button: Open. About ten seconds on our test machine, and no sign-in. The test machine isn't signed in to a Microsoft account at all, and the Store didn't ask for one.
River: So let's press Enter on Open.
[Demo, 3:28, logged] unavailable RSS Quick window RSS Feed Tree tree view Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to load headlines level 1 Global News & Current Affairs collapsed 1 of 7
River: RSS Quick window, then the feed tree, with its hint: navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to load headlines. And then where we are: Global News and Current Affairs, collapsed, one of seven, level one. Focus starts in the list of feeds, ready to go.
Michael: And a nice thing about getting it from the Store: Windows keeps it up to date, like any other Store app. You never have to come back here.
Moving around the feed tree (4:03)
River: RSS Quick starts with a list of nearly two hundred feeds, in seven folders: world news, business, technology, science and health, the arts, sports, and accessibility. Let's just walk around it with the arrow keys. Down arrow twice, right arrow to open the Technology folder, down into it, then left arrow to go back up.
[Demo, 4:21, logged] Business & Finance collapsed 2 of 7 level 1 Technology collapsed 3 of 7 level 1 expanded level 2 General Tech News collapsed 1 of 3 Startups & Venture Capital collapsed 2 of 3 level 2 level 1 Technology expanded 3 of 7 collapsed Arts, Culture & Entertainment collapsed 5 of 7 level 1 Accessibility (Custom) collapsed 7 of 7 level 1
Michael: Every row said its name, whether it's open or closed, where it sits, like three of seven, and how deep it is: level one for the main folders, level two inside them. Right arrow opened Technology. Left arrow from inside it went straight back to the folder, and left again closed it.
River: And at the end we typed the letter A, twice. The first A jumped to Arts, Culture and Entertainment, and the second to Accessibility. You can type the start of any name to get there.
Michael: Here's the thing to notice, though. We moved through a dozen rows, and nothing loaded. Arrowing never fetches anything. Only Enter does. So you can browse a hundred feeds as fast as you like, and nothing gets in your way.
Reading a feed (5:34)
River: Now let's read something. We're in Technology, in the General Tech News folder. Down arrow to The Verge, and Enter.
[Demo, 5:42, logged] level 3 The Verge 1 of 5 Headlines List list Browse headlines with arrow keys, press Enter or Alt+B to open in browser iFixit’s look inside the iPhone Duo may explain those broken screens and hinges 10/25/2026 4:40 PM 1 of 10 Scott Walker’s The Drift will get under your skin 10/25/2026 4:08 PM 2 of 10 A YouTuber dissected an iPhone Duo and thinks he found the cause of crackgate 10/25/2026 3:16 PM 3 of 10 RSS Feed Tree tree view Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to load headlines The Verge 1 of 5 level 3 Headlines List list Browse headlines with arrow keys, press Enter or Alt+B to open in browser A YouTuber dissected an iPhone Duo and thinks he found the cause of crackgate 10/25/2026 3:16 PM 3 of 10
Michael: Enter fetched The Verge, and focus moved to the first headline by itself. Each headline is read with its date and time, and its place in the list: one of ten. Then we arrowed down twice.
River: Did you catch the first headline, though? Where the site meant an apostrophe, NVDA read out a bit of code. The Verge sends its headlines with web page codes in them, and RSS Quick doesn't turn them back into ordinary characters yet. We've put that on the bug list, along with the others we'll come to.
River: And then F6. F6 went back to the feed tree, onto The Verge, where we'd left it. F6 again came back to the headlines, and to exactly the headline we were on, three of ten, not the top of the list. That's on purpose. Wherever you go, coming back puts you where you were.
Michael: From there, Enter on a headline, or alt B, opens the story in your browser. We'll do that in a minute. Control 1 and control 2 also go straight to the tree or the headlines, and F5 fetches the feed again.
A whole folder at once (7:16)
River: This is the feature I like most. Press Enter on a folder, not a feed, and RSS Quick fetches every feed in it at once, and merges them into one list, newest first. Here's General Tech News: five sites.
[Demo, 7:28, logged] Headlines List list Browse headlines with arrow keys, press Enter or Alt+B to open in browser Can you run regular Ethernet cables outside? 10/25/2026 7:00 PM 1 of 200 Which Android phone is the closest equivalent to the iPhone Duo? 10/25/2026 6:45 PM 2 of 200 Why Google chrome is always using so much RAM 10/25/2026 6:30 PM 3 of 200
Michael: Two hundred headlines from five sites, in one list, the newest at the top: can you run regular Ethernet cables outside? Then a question about Android phones, then one about why Chrome uses so much memory. All from the last hour or so.
River: Notice what the rows didn't say, though: which site each one came from. If a few sites are down when you do this, you still get the rest. And that brings us to something we found while making this tour.
Michael: RSS Quick has a status line at the bottom of the window. It's meant to say things like loading five feeds, how many headlines arrived, which sites failed, and which feed each headline in a merged list came from. In the version you just heard, NVDA doesn't say any of that by itself, and it can't find the status line to read it on request either. That's a bug, and it's on the list to be fixed.
River: We found another one too, which is already fixed. Until this week, the feed tree you heard earlier read every single feed and folder as R S S reader W P F dot feed item, instead of its name. That was fixed in version one point four point one, which is the version in this tour. So if you tried RSS Quick before and gave up on that tree, it's worth another go.
Search every feed (9:08)
Michael: Next: searching. Slash, or control F, searches the headlines of every feed in your list. We'll press slash, type accessibility, and press Enter.
[Demo, 9:19, logged] Search All Feeds dialog Search the headlines of every feed for: edit S blank RSS Feed Tree tree view Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to load headlines Global News & Current Affairs collapsed 1 of 7 level 1 Headlines List list Browse headlines with arrow keys, press Enter or Alt+B to open in browser Carousel Digital Signage Achieves Substantial Conformance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA Requirement - IndyStar 10/20/2026 12:19 PM 1 of 384 Candycopia raises awareness on website ADA Compliance - Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest 10/20/2026 11:55 AM 2 of 384
River: It went through every feed in the list, nearly two hundred sites, in about ten seconds, and gave us three hundred and eighty four headlines with the word accessibility in them. The first was about digital signage meeting the W C A G accessibility guidelines.
Michael: RSS Quick doesn't keep copies of anything, so a search always fetches every feed fresh, the same way loading a folder does. You can type several words, and it finds headlines containing all of them, ignoring capitals and accents. Escape stops a search that's taking too long, and F5 runs it again later.
Adding your own feeds (10:38)
River: The starter list is just a start. Control N subscribes to a new feed, and you don't need to know the feed's address. The website's address will do, and RSS Quick finds the feed the site links to. Let's add a blog: The Idea Place, at the idea place dot net. We'll type the address, and Enter.
[Demo, 10:53, logged] Subscribe to Feed dialog Address of the feed or its website: edit A blank theideaplace RSS Feed Tree tree view Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to load headlines Global News & Current Affairs collapsed 1 of 7 level 1 level 2 The Idea Place 8 of 8 Headlines List list Browse headlines with arrow keys, press Enter or Alt+B to open in browser A Mailing List for My Projects 10/22/2026 8:43 AM 1 of 10 Introducing Quick Describe: Press a Key, Get a Description 10/17/2026 1:04 PM 2 of 10 Introducing Quick Describe: Press a Key, Get a Description – The Idea Place - Profile 1 - Microsoft Edge window Introducing Quick Describe: Press a Key, Get a Description – The Idea Place Loading complete same page link Skip to content → banner landmark link The Idea Place A collection of thoughts on what comes to mind navigation landmark navigation landmark list with 1 item link PROJECTS out of list list with 1 item link mastodon out of list toggle button not pressed search search landmark Search Search for: edit Search... complementary landmark heading level 1 Sidebar button collapsed open sidebar RSS Quick window Headlines List list Browse headlines with arrow keys, press Enter or Alt+B to open in browser Introducing Quick Describe: Press a Key, Get a Description 10/17/2026 1:04 PM 2 of 10
Michael: A lot happened in a few seconds there. Subscribing found the blog's feed, added it as The Idea Place, and put focus right on it in the tree: eight of eight in the folder we were in. Enter loaded its posts, and we arrowed to the second one.
River: Then Enter on the headline opened the post in Microsoft Edge, and NVDA started reading the web page. That's the point of opening stories in your browser: it's the place your screen reader handles best. Then alt F4 closed the browser, and we were back in RSS Quick, on the same headline.
Michael: Subscribing also saves your feed list straight away, as your own default, so it opens next time. Delete in the tree removes a feed. And if you already use another reader, control O imports its list, in the OPML format every feed reader uses, and control E exports yours.
Help, and built for braille (12:35)
River: Two last things. F1 lists every keyboard shortcut. And the Help menu has About RSS Quick.
[Demo, 12:42, logged] RSS Quick Keyboard Shortcuts dialog Moving around Alt or F10: the menu bar, where every command is Tab or Shift+Tab: the buttons, the feed tree and the headlines F6 or Ctrl+Tab: switch between the feed tree and the headlines Ctrl+1 or Ctrl+2: go straight to the feed tree or the headlines Arrow keys: move within a list. Right and Left open and close folders Type a few letters: jump to a feed or headline by name Reading Enter: on a feed, load its headlines. On a folder, load all of them. On a headline, open it in your browser. Alt+B: open the selected headline in your browser / or Ctrl+F: search the headlines of every feed F5: reload what is on screen, or run the search again Escape: stop a load or a search that is taking too long Feeds and files Ctrl+N: subscribe to a feed, by its address or its website's Delete: in the feed tree, remove the selected feed Ctrl+E: export your feed list as an OPML file Ctrl+O: import a different OPML feed list Alt+D: make the feed list on screen your default Alt+U: get a new version, once there is one Text size Ctrl+Plus or Ctrl+Minus: larger or smaller text, until RSS Quick closes Ctrl+0: back to your Windows text size Selecting a feed never fetches anything. Only Enter does. RSS Quick 1.4.1 OK button RSS Quick window RSS Feed Tree tree view Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to load headlines Global News & Current Affairs collapsed 1 of 7 level 1 File collapsed Alt+ F 1 of 5 Help collapsed Alt+ H 5 of 5 expanded Keyboard Shortcuts K 1 of 3 Check for Updates C 2 of 3 About RSS Quick A 3 of 3 About RSS Quick dialog RSS Quick 1.4.1 An RSS reader built for screen reader and braille display users. Installed from the Microsoft Store. https://github.com/TheIdeaPlace/rssquick OK button RSS Quick window RSS Feed Tree tree view Navigate with arrow keys, press Enter to load headlines Global News & Current Affairs collapsed 1 of 7 level 1
Michael: F1 opened the list of shortcuts and NVDA started reading it from the top, under moving around: alt or F10 for the menu bar, tab and shift tab, F6. It goes on through reading, feeds and files, and text size, but we cut it short with Escape. Then alt, left arrow to the Help menu, and down to About, which told us the version, and that this copy came from the Microsoft Store.
River: Every command is in the menus, on alt or F10, with its shortcut beside it. And nothing in a menu is ever greyed out, so arrowing through a menu always tells you everything that's there.
Michael: And something you can't hear in this tour, but braille readers will notice. Publishers leave all sorts of invisible characters and odd spaces in their headlines. On a braille display, those turn into confusing blank cells. RSS Quick takes them out of every headline before it shows it to you. The web page codes you heard earlier are the next thing on that list.
River: Two more you'd only see: there are no fixed colours anywhere, so Windows high contrast themes just work, and control plus and control minus change the text size while it's open.
Where to get RSS Quick (14:46)
Michael: RSS Quick is free, and open source. On Windows, the easiest way is the one we just used: search the Microsoft Store for RSS Quick. There's also an installer and a portable copy on the project's GitHub page, and a version for the Mac.
River: You'll find all of them, and the user guide, under the RSS Quick heading at the idea place dot net slash projects. Thanks for listening. I'm River.
Michael: And I'm Michael. Happy reading.