Opening Windows 10 Action Center should focus and speak first actionable item

[XLTechie]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When opening Windows 10 Action Center, the following is spoken:

Action Center Window

The first item, the one I expect to be interacting with, at least at the moment on my system, is:

Brightness slider 0 1 of 1

However, NVDA is not interacting with the brightness slider. In fact it appears to be interacting with nothing. But if I press tab, followed by shift+tab, I am then interacting with the brightness slider. From a UX prospective, and intuitively, if I open a window, the item I'm focused on should be the same one reached by the compound action of Tab followed by Shift+Tab. But instead, opening Action Center leaves one in limbo.

Describe the solution you'd like

Upon opening Action Center, I would expect to hear:

Action Center Window Brightness slider 0 1 of 1

And I would expect arrow keys at this point to be immediately changing the brightness slider's value.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Leaving it the way it is. What NVDA speaks is correct to what actually happens: when opening Action Center, no control is given keyboard focus, and so no control is spoken. So the current behavior is correct in as far as it goes, it just doesn't seem to be what a user would expect. Not this user anyway.

A point for the other side: Narrator behaves the same way. So perhaps this is intentional behavior on Microsoft's part.

Additional context

Here is the devInfo for the focused object when Action Center opens:

INFO - globalCommands.GlobalCommands.script_navigatorObject_devInfo (17:16:53.110) - MainThread (6892):
Developer info for navigator object:
name: 'Action center'
role: ROLE_WINDOW
roleText: None
states: STATE_FOCUSED
isFocusable: False
hasFocus: True
Python object: <NVDAObjects.UIA.UIA object at 0x085AA290>
Python class mro: (<class 'NVDAObjects.UIA.UIA'>, <class 'NVDAObjects.window.Window'>, <class 'NVDAObjects.NVDAObject'>, <class 'documentBase.TextContainerObject'>, <class 'baseObject.ScriptableObject'>, <class 'baseObject.AutoPropertyObject'>, <class 'garbageHandler.TrackedObject'>, <class 'object'>)
description: ''
location: RectLTWH(left=1524, top=0, width=396, height=1040)
value: None
appModule: <'shellexperiencehost' (appName 'shellexperiencehost', process ID 7344) at address 860bf70>
appModule.productName: 'Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost'
appModule.productVersion: '10.0.19041.423'
TextInfo: <class 'displayModel.DisplayModelTextInfo'>
windowHandle: 131802
windowClassName: 'Windows.UI.Core.CoreWindow'
windowControlID: 0
windowStyle: -1811939328
extendedWindowStyle: 2097160
windowThreadID: 11240
windowText: 'Action center'
displayText: ''
UIAElement: <POINTER(IUIAutomationElement) ptr=0x515d138 at 8558c10>
UIA automationID: 
UIA frameworkID: XAML
UIA runtimeID: (42, 131802)
UIA providerDescription: [pid:5336,providerId:0x202DA Main:Nested [pid:7344,providerId:0x202DA Main(parent link):Unidentified Provider (unmanaged:Windows.UI.Xaml.dll)]; Hwnd(parent link):Microsoft: HWND Proxy (unmanaged:UIAutomationCore.dll); View:Microsoft: ViewID Proxy (unmanaged:UIAutomationCore.dll)]
UIA className: Windows.UI.Core.CoreWindow
UIA patterns available: WindowPattern, LegacyIAccessiblePattern

[josephsl]

Hi, this indeed requires an external fix (specifically from Microsoft’s Windows Shell team; I know one engineer from that team, but don’t know her GitHub handle at the moment; I can try messaging her on Twitter). Thanks.

[josephsl]

Hi, the following feedback was filed four months ago (by someone else, not me): https://aka.ms/AA9bjoz

[Adriani90]

@XLTechie, @josephsl is the Microsoft bug fixed in the last Windows 10 updates? Or is this issue still reproducible with NVDA 2024.3 Beta?

[XLTechie]

I unfortunately do not currently have access to updated Windows 10 to test this.

[josephsl]

Hi,

July 2024 update: not resolved and unlikely to be resolved unless Microsoft looks into this before October 2025 (tested on a virtual machine running Windows 10 Insider release preview channel build).

Thanks.