Current state of UIA implementation. Was: Corporate mode for NVDA

[gerald-hartig]

<Edit by @Qchristensen> This was originally an issue proposing a corporate mode for NVDA. The discussion was very beneficial but concentrated solely on the current state of UIA implementation. As such, I am moving it to a discussion on THAT topic, and have created new issue #16599 with the original details for Corporate Mode.

[Adriani90]

The UIA settings from the advanced settings are crucial as well, e.g. not using UIA in Microsoft Word is still a better choice, especially in corporate environments.

[zstanecic]

Hi Adriani, i tend to disagree here. I know people, who use UIA in the corporate mode: The reasons are as follows: speed, responsiveness, and better interaction in documents, especially in latest office 365.

[Adriani90]

I don‘t agree. I am working with NVDA in corporate, and office still has lot of limitations in office products. There are still lots of issues also open on github whuich are still a show stopper for default UIA. Von meinem iPhone gesendetAm 21.05.2024 um 13:03 schrieb Zvonimir Stanečić ***@***.***>: Hi Adriani, i tend to disagree here. I know people, who use UIA in the corporate mode: The reasons are as follows: speed, responsiveness, and better interaction in documents, especially in latest office 365. —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[josephsl]

Hi,

Both points are valid. Corporate environments do not update office suites often, or if they do, updates are delayed slightly from consumer releases to help IT folks test things and to make the suite comply with policies (I bet there are organizations using Office 2013 (end of life for various reasons). On the other hand, with migration to newer Office products such as Office 2021 and upcoming Office 2024 (or even Microsoft 365), information workers (including people in corporate settings) can use Office releases with improved UIA support. Do note that Word object model does not handle more modern things well (if we are to require UIA in Office suite, we need to drop support for Office versions earlier than 2019).

Thanks.

[XLTechie]

@zstanecic true, but @Adriani90 has a valid point too. It depends on many factors, including what you are doing with the Office programs (which features are important to your work), and which version your company lets you run. There are still some rather huge corporations, insisting on using older versions of Office and even Windows. For example, in the U.S., one of the largest banks in the country was still using Windows 10, 1809 version, and Office 2016, as of two years ago. While that is inconceivably stupid from most points of view, UIA would never have been appropriate in that environment. Especially since there have been some issues suggesting that NVDA doesn't always detect when it shouldn't use UIA. So in corporate support environments, this may need to be configurable by the user, not just by the IT department.

[CyrilleB79]

@zstanecic true, but @Adriani90 has a valid point too. It depends on many factors, including what you are doing with the Office programs (which features are important to your work), and which version your company lets you run. There are still some rather huge corporations, insisting on using older versions of Office and even Windows. For example, in the U.S., one of the largest banks in the country was still using Windows 10, 1809 version, and Office 2016, as of two years ago. While that is inconceivably stupid from most points of view, UIA would never have been appropriate in that environment. Especially since there have been some issues suggesting that NVDA doesn't always detect when it shouldn't use UIA. So in corporate support environments, this may need to be configurable by the user, not just by the IT department.

I do not understand this discussion about old Office versions.
NVDA usually decide if UIA should be used or not for Word, depending on Word version and Windows version.
Except at NVDA startup (see #13704), I do not know of any use case where NVDA does not decide correctly. @XLTechie have you one or more other case in mind?

[Adriani90]

The issues with UIA are in Office 365, they all are still open here on Github.Von meinem iPhone gesendetAm 22.05.2024 um 14:51 schrieb Cyrille Bougot ***@***.***>: @zstanecic true, but @Adriani90 has a valid point too. It depends on many factors, including what you are doing with the Office programs (which features are important to your work), and which version your company lets you run. There are still some rather huge corporations, insisting on using older versions of Office and even Windows. For example, in the U.S., one of the largest banks in the country was still using Windows 10, 1809 version, and Office 2016, as of two years ago. While that is inconceivably stupid from most points of view, UIA would never have been appropriate in that environment. Especially since there have been some issues suggesting that NVDA doesn't always detect when it shouldn't use UIA. So in corporate support environments, this may need to be configurable by the user, not just by the IT department. I do not understand this discussion about old Office versions. NVDA usually decide if UIA should be used or not for Word, depending on Word version and Windows version. Except at NVDA startup (see #13704), I do not know of any use case where NVDA does not decide correctly. @XLTechie have you one or more other case in mind? —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Adriani90]

With UIA enabled in MS Word and Outlook which is the default, following issues are still open and valid according to my testing, also in Office 365:

Outlook

• In Outlook NVDA cannot activate grafic links in browse mode (Unable to activate graphic links in Outlook (with UIA, in browse mode) #15326)
• In Outlook NVDA doesn't read the image descriptions (Alt text not announced in Outlook win32 emails #14217)
• Problem with data tables being recognized when UIA is on in Outlook (Data tables aren't reported as tables in Microsoft Outlook with UIA #12853),
• UIA has an effect on NVDA reading layout tables in emails in Outlook (see NVDA reads layout tables in Outlook 365 #14892 (comment))
• Page numbers are reported in outlook when uIA is enabled which is confusing (Outlook with UIA: page numbers are reported #9190)
• And probably others I could't find on the first look

MS Word

• Severe freeze when using text style navigation (text style navigation: Severe freeze when using UIA in MS Word and no next or previous style has been found #16546)
• Alt text on images is not read when UIA is enabled (Word 365: Table alt text only read if UIA set to "Only when necessary" #16185)
• NVDA skips empty cells in browse mode when using tables in MS Word and UIA is enabled (NVDA skips empty cells im Microsoft Word Tables while using browse mode with UIA enabled. #15456)
• Deleting characters with backspace in MS Word sometimes fails when UIA is enabled (Backspace in Word doesn't always read removed character (Windows 10, Office 365, UIA default #13748)
• NVDA still uses UIA after restarting it, although the user disabled UIA. This happens also in old MS Word versions before 365 (Just after NVDA restarts, Word uses UIA no matter the parameter in advanced settings panel #13704)
• Numbered lists with blank lines are not reported properly when UIA is enabled (Numbering not read for new or blank items in a list in Word with UIA enabled #13462)
• Track changes in MS Word with single markup do not work when UIA is enabled (When simple markup is on, NVDA gives no indication that there are tracked changes in Word with UIA set to Always #13460)
• When a new row is added via tab key in MS Word with UIA enabled, NVDA does not report it while in browse mode (Browse Mode in Word UIA: Creation of new row on pressing Tab not reported  #13077)
• Further problem with lists in MS Word when UIA is enabled (Uia in Word365: NVDA doesn't read list item number for empty item on last line of document #13064)
• NVDA reports confusing information in MS Word tables when UiA is enabled and navigating with tab through the table (Tab Navigation in Tables Announces Selection Changes in Word When Using UIA #12998)
• Formatting styles are not always properly reported when UIA is enabled (Formatting in Word: style is not properly reported in some cases with UIA enabled #11427, UIA Word support: unable to read character styles #9766)
• Scrolling does not work properly when UIA is enabled and when using say all (Say all does not scroll consistently in word365 with UIA enabled #9559)

Registering for UIA events

• There are problems when using UIA registering for event selectively which is the default behavior, especially in MS Outlook, task manager and context menus in Firefox (When selective UIA event registration is enabled, NVDA is too verbose in Task Manager #11599, Context menus in Firefox read inconsistently with selective UIA handling enabled #11354, NVDA reads layout tables in Outlook 365 #14892)

I could continue with UIA in consoles, and UIA in Chromium browsers where we also need to change the settings case by case to gain better accessibility.

[Adriani90]

At least for UIA in Word and Outlook, in my view it was a mistake to enable UIA by default. Who ever is using UIA in MS Office, it is definitely having some important drawbacks compared to objectModel.

[CyrilleB79]

At least for UIA in Word and Outlook, in my view it was a mistake to enable UIA by default. Who ever is using UIA in MS Office, it is definitely having some important drawbacks compared to objectModel.

Oh! I was not aware of these so many issues. Some of them are not so important, but at least the two first are.
You may open a new issue asking to turn back to legacy by default. Not sure that NV Access will accept it but surely it will be re-discussed in a centralized place. And maybe the most important issues can be prioritized again by NV Access.

In any case, I will not discuss UIA/not UIA topic further here since IMO, there is no reason why the config should be different between corporate or home user. But if Word UIA should be configurable by any user according to his/her needs, and this seem to be the case, there's no point to keep this option in Advanced settings. The truth is probably that NVDA shouldn't even allow to configure Word UIA/non-UIA; it should take best of both world according to each situation, as it is probably done in Jaws.

[Adriani90]

The truth is probably that NVDA shouldn't even allow to configure Word UIA/non-UIA; it should take best of both world according to each situation, as it is probably done in Jaws.

I think the best way would be to have a properly designed API which is maintained regularly instead of having 3 or I don't know how many APIs out there.
Jaws merges API calls indeed between both objectModel and UIA, but this causes freezes and crashes in different areas because in some cases API calls can interfere. So It is ok to separate them I think. But if someone merges them properly, it might work as well, who knows...

[RuturajL]

There's a built-in Kiosk mode in Windows already, if NVDA's Kiosk mode isn't going to be related to that, I would strongly advise against using that nomenclature.
If most of (admin permission needed settings) are going to be not available, then I wonder how I'll make NVDA have the same configurations on my lock-screen and on secured screens as my normal user configurations.
How would we enable automatic updates without admin permissions? I think this also links backs to my previously raised issue, #16498, making NVDA available in microsoft store. This way, we can deploy the package via Microsoft Intune management extention or any other MDM tools, keep it updated from microsoft store in corporate environments.
Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/apps/store-apps-microsoft

[seanbudd]

@RuturajL - yes, it is both related to kiosk mode and has the same principles behind it.
Currently secure mode covers both the kiosk use case, and the corporate use case, which is why we want to split these out.
The main use of kiosk mode is for secure screens like UAC and the sign-in screen.
These run from a system profile where it is important that 1 user cannot write to disk and change the settings of the global system installation.
i.e. NVDA in kiosk mode must be stateless after a restart.
This is the same principle as Windows Kiosk mode, as kiosks must be safe, restricted and stateless.
Kiosk Mode main use would be for Kiosk environments (including testing environments).

[Adriani90]

Regarding UIA default setting in MS Word, I also found #15094 which in my view is also quite critical.

[dpy013]

Regarding so many UIA issues.
Is it possible to organize the issues in a unified way and use a solution model like a thematic version to get these issues out of the way?

[Adriani90]

There is a label for all UIA issues, and in Github NV Access can bulk all issues with this label into a project, in case they want to work on them strategically. Otherwise voluntary developers from the community will have to take them one by one or so.

[Adriani90]

There is also #14884 which is very crucial in my opinion as well.
When you read that example MS Word form document with UIA enabled, it is impossible to fill or to interact with it in an accessible way.