Screen Reader and UI Language

Installation & Configuration
2

Hi @Alfred

Welcome to the Collabora Online Forum!

It’s wonderful to hear you’re testing Collabora Online in SharePoint — and great to know things are working well for you so far with the CODE image and nginx reverse proxy setup. Quite a good job getting that all running!

Let me address your two questions:

1. Screen Reader – No Audio Output

This is worth noting: the screen reader functionality in Collabora Online is designed to work with a client-side screen reader (such as NVDA, JAWS, or Orca) already running on the user’s machine. The accessibility.enable=true parameter you’ve set correctly enables the accessibility support within Collabora Online, but Collabora itself doesn’t generate audio output server-side. It exposes an accessible DOM / ARIA-annotated interface that a screen reader on the user’s system can then pick up and read aloud.

So the expected workflow is: enable accessibility in Collabora (which you’ve done), then ensure the end user has a screen reader active on their desktop. The “screen reader” toggle under the Help menu essentially switches Collabora into an accessibility-friendly rendering mode so that external screen readers can interact with the document content properly.

If you already have a client-side screen reader running and still get no output, it may be worth checking that the browser being used is well-supported (Firefox and Chrome tend to work best with screen readers) and that the screen reader is set to interact with web content.

For example see the latest : Screen Reader Support in Collabora Online #FeatureFriday

2. UI Language – How to Configure

This one has actually been solved by another community member in a related thread! SharePoint SE in with Collabora Online – GUI in German [fixed]

The key is how the lang parameter is passed in the call to cool.html.

You’re on the right track with &lang=de, but the critical detail — especially behind a reverse proxy — is that the & character must be properly escaped in the URL. So the call needs to look like:

cool.html?lang=de&

With nginx as your reverse proxy, make sure that the & isn’t being swallowed or misinterpreted in the rewrite/proxy pass. The language parameter needs to survive the proxy chain intact and reach cool.html correctly.

A few things to check:

  • The lang=de parameter must be part of the actual call to cool.html — setting HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE headers or browser language alone isn’t sufficient, as the localization JSON may load based on browser language but not actually get applied without the explicit URL parameter.
  • After making the change, you may need to reset the WOPI binding in SharePoint for it to take effect.
  • Make sure the & escaping is correct for your specific reverse proxy configuration (nginx in your case).

Hope this helps you get both issues sorted!

Thanks
Darshan