Report "Small caps" and "All caps" formatting in Word

[Qchristensen]

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

In Microsoft Word, select some text and press control+d to open font formatting. Two options on this page are:

• Small caps (alt+m), Text appears the same size as usual, but all characters appear as uppercase ("lowercase" characters are smaller)
• All caps (alt+a), All text appears as if it was typed in uppercase, although internally the characters are still the case they were typed in (if you take off the "all caps" setting, the text will go back to the case it was typed in).

Although not as commonly used as other formatting effects, these attributes are not reported by NVDA.

Describe the solution you'd like

NVDA could report these attributes as part of "emphasis" as bold and strikethrough are.

Describe alternatives you've considered

We could make a new document formatting checkbox, but given they are not used as widely, reporting as emphasis will likely solve the issue for users who need these reported.

Additional context

Noted that Narrator does not currently report these attributes.

Tested with: NVDA 2021.3.3

Windows 10 (64-bit) Version: 21H2 (2009), Build: 19044.1526

Office 365 (64-bit) Version: 16.0.14931.20118

[XLTechie]

NVDA could report these attributes as part of "emphasis" as bold and strikethrough are.

Their more stylistic than they are emphatic, aren't they? How does Microsoft class them?

I don't know that a user would expect Emphasis announcement to control this. That said, I don't know where these are commonly used, probably because I have never heard them announced, so perhaps I am wrong.

[CyrilleB79]

IMO, it's not emphasis since it has not predefined semantic as the emphasis HTML tag has; it is rather stylistic as @XLTechie indicated.

It could be added it in the 'Font attributes' formatting option, i.e. it will be reported during navigation only if this option is checked. It may be handled the same way as bold, italic, underline and strikethrough formatting that are currently covered by 'Font attributes' option.

For legacy Word object model access, I think there is no difficulty to implement this. However for UIA, I am afraid this information cannot be requested, unless there is something specific for Word.

If it is confirmed that UIA does not allow to get this information, I think that this issue will remain blocked until Microsoft implements a way to get this information via UIA.

For now on Windows 10 and Word 2016, Narrator does not report thihs formatting (even with the higher level of details), whereas it already reports bold.

To make UIA evolve, the request to have other text formatting reported via UIA should be requested to Microsoft, e.g. requesting that Narrator support them. @Qchristensen could you contact Microsoft in the name of NVAccess if you want to support this request further?

[Qchristensen]

I have got follow up from Microsoft on this, and they advise that both Narrator and Jaws DO report these attributes.

"With Narrator you have to double tap Narrator+F and it will read either small caps or all caps, you can press Narrator+F quite a few times to get different “layers” of formatting too. JAWS also should read with the same key combo."

Microsoft didn't confirm which build of Office they tested that on or how Narrator accessed it, but I would generally assume they are using either the latest release or possibly even a pre-release, and UIA.

My thought around reporting it as emphasis was simply that often the way capitalizing a whole word is used is to emphasise it. Personally, if I'm going to do that I'll just TYPE the word in all caps, I'm not really sure why you would do it with an attribute like this. But the attribute exists. I'm fine for it to go in font attributes instead - Mainly I just don't feel it needs to add another checkbox to the document formatting settings, so wanted to put it in with something which already exists.

[CyrilleB79]

If it's supported by narrator, it's a good news; it means that it is included in some way in UIA interface. Thanks also for the detailed info on how to make Narrator report it.

I did not succeed in making Narrator report it on the version of Word I have here (2016, version '16.0.5266.1000'). But I will try on a newer version when I can.

If I can confirm all this on my side, I may work on it, but I cannot guarantee when.

)

[Qchristensen]

The following information gives a bit more usage on Small Caps:

"small caps are rarely used in regular text. however, when we write papers, articles or researches, we may be required to follow citation rule that uses 'small caps'. Good example is Bluebook citation rule for legal articles and researches. According to this book of citation, many sources are cited with their title or author with small caps. Otherwise, people in the field will consider your work just as a mere draft." and "Bluebook is the most popular citation book in legal field. It is published by Harvard, Yell and Colombia schools of Law. If you want to publish a legal article in major journals in the world, you are necessarily required to cite your article on the basis of this book. Otherwise, your article is unconditionally rejected despite impressive in terms of content. In particular, here in America, every law student is required to write his assignment and cite using bluebook format. Not citing using small caps is of awful consequence. Although I don't understand the reason behind it, Bluebook uses small caps extensively."

From a thread about this in the NVDA group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nvdaforum/posts/1821523114720009/?comment_id=1823584641180523&reply_comment_id=1823871567818497