List items are double speaking in Office 365 when UIA is enabled for Office applications

[rkingett]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Enable Use UI Automation to access Microsoft Word document controls when available from the advanced settings menu.
2. Create a blank word document.
3. Make a list with more than 3 items.
4. Navigate the list with the arrow keys, or control+arrow keys. Navigate vertically.

Actual behavior:

NVDA repeats the start of the list item, even when the cursor is navigating to another list item. For example, I hear the numeral of the particular item twice.

Expected behavior:

NVDA should not repeat the previous list item.

System configuration

NVDA 2019.3.1 installed

NVDA version: 2019.3.1

Windows version: Version 1909 (OS Build 18363.657)

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

Microsoft® Word for Office 365 MSO (16.0.12430.20112) 32-bit

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your PC?

Yes.

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

It does this with 2019.2 as well.

[DrSooom]

@rkingett: Please specify the Office 365 version. Thanks.

[rkingett]

I didn't mean to close it. I added it above, but the version is Microsoft® Word for Office 365 MSO (16.0.12430.20112) 32-bit

[michaelDCurran]

This was a bug in MS Word. Fixed sometime before S Word version 16.0.14405.20002.

[brunoprietog]

@michaelDCurran Hi, I can still reproduce this error in Word 16.0.14527.20234 and NVDA 2021.3 beta 1. Let me know if I can provide more information somehow. Thanks!

[lukaszgo1]

Given that this still does not work according to @brunoprietog can this issue be reopened please?

[brunoprietog]

In fact, this also happens in the Windows 10 mail application when reading emails. If you press CTRL + down arrow and find lists, it will read each item twice.

[michaelDCurran]

Microsoft Word handles paragraph navigation (control+arrows) a little unexpectedly when on list items. Essentially, the bullet/number is treated as a character stop. I.e. moving with control+downArrow, Word moves to the bullet, and then the content. the next bullet, and then the content. However, Microsoft word has no current way of exposing whether the caret is actually on the bullet or the first character in the content. They booth are the same when it comes to UI Automation or the object model. The only way we can really fix this is to provide scripts in NVDA for control+upArrow / control+downArrow, which will jump over the bullets.

[Adriani90]

In the settings category "document navigation" you can choose NVDA to use one linebreak as indicator for a new paragraph. Choosing that setting fixes this issue. So i am closing as works for me.

[brunoprietog]

Hey @Adriani90, I'm sorry, but I don't agree with closing this. It's not intuitive at all that a user has to know this let alone do it. It should work right out of the box

[XLTechie]

@Adriani90 I must disagree with your reasoning. I have tested this, and while your solution is practically accurate, using it directly contradicts the user guide.

The user guide states that this feature is best for applications which do not support native paragraph navigation. Word certainly does not meet that qualification, as it is the very built in paragraph navigation of Word which is malfunctioning in this report.

Thus, not only would a reasonable reader of the user guide not expect to need this feature in order to properly read lists; but also any user who is familiar with navigation in Word will expect it to be excluded from the purpose for which single line paragraph navigation is intended.

I vote to re-open, and instead implement @michaelDCurran's proposed solution of scripts to work around this deficiency in word, until such time as Word itself solves it--which is probably unlikely in our lifetimes.