Bug 156968 - NVDA screen reader doesn't announce all cells in some tables (like Java settings, Expert Configuration dialog)
Summary: NVDA screen reader doesn't announce all cells in some tables (like Java setti...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
24.2.0.0 alpha0+
Hardware: All Windows (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility
Depends on:
Blocks: a11y-Windows
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Reported: 2023-08-28 13:02 UTC by Michael Weghorn
Modified: 2023-09-05 14:09 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Michael Weghorn 2023-08-28 13:02:10 UTC
This is a follow-up ticket for tdf#99609 (and tdf#156473).

There seems to be no way to make NVDA announce all columns for the currently selected row in the "Expert Configuration" dialog.

Steps to reproduce:

1) start the NVDA screen reader
2) start LO Writer
3) open the Expert Configuration dialog: Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice (Dev) -> Advanced -> Open Expert Configuration
4) move focus to the table
5) expand the first node, move to the first "leaf item" (i.e. item that doesn't have any further children in the tree view): "org.openoffice.VCL:ConfigurableSettings['WM']"

Similar for the table of Java version on the advanced settings page.

# Actual result:

The NVDA screen reader announces the selected item/row, but not all of the columns. As mentioned in  bug 99609 comment 17:

> What NVDA actually announces is a little different ("<first cell> through
> <last cell>" for the selection), but FWICT, that's how it's implemented in
> NVDA at the moment (...).

In this case, it announces "org.openoffice.VCL:ConfigurableSettings['WM'] through false".
This way, the values in the "Property" and "Type" columns are not announced by NVDA.

It's not possible to explicitly move focus to another column e.g. by using the arrow keys either.

Therefore, there currently doesn't seem to be a way to make NVDA announce the other columns at all.

# Expected result:

There should be a way to make NVDA announce all cells in a row in the Expert Configuration dialog. (Either all at once, or move from one to the other,...).

# More information

Other applications expose similar table controls in the UI differently, in which case the whole row is announced by NVDA, so taking a look at these might give some ideas.
e.g.:

* Eclipse (2023-06): Window -> Preferences -> General -> Keys
* Firefox (116.0.3): Application/MIME-type mapping table in Tools -> Settings
* Word: "File" -> "Options" -> "Add-Ins"

The Orca screen reader on Linux has a setting to announce the whole row in a table, in which case this works, but NVDA doesn't currently seem to have something like this for these use cases as far as I can see. (There's a "Read entire row" command [1], but as far as I can see, this is primarily when support for this has been added for tables within documents, not in the UI elsewhere -- and it's not implemented for LO yet at this point either.)

This might need work in LO and/or NVDA.

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: f0a6c9c7da2f0393bdde2729565b2458d1ff6c5a
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_DE); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

NVDA 2023.1

[1] https://www.nvaccess.org/files/nvda/documentation/userGuide.html#SystemCaret