Powerpoint doesn't report alignment and other formatting info

[nvaccessAuto]

Reported by Shaimaa on 2014-03-24 14:20 When using Microsoft Powerpoint 2010, NVDA doesn't report the alignment information of the text by pressing NVDA+F even when the alignment check box is checked from the document formatting dialogue. It doesn't inform the user whether it is in the right, center, or left. NVDA doesn't also report the formatting style used, is it levels, normal, or bulleted list. Any fix for this issue will be highly appreciated. as Powerpoint is very visual, we need to have better control over it as much as we can because it is important for school and work presentations. Thanks and good luck

[LeonarddeR]

@Shaimaa: Are you the Shaimaa that opened this issue and if so, could you provide details on whether this has been fixed?

[jcsteh]

It's still a valid issue. P3 because there are certainly use cases for accessing this info, but we haven't had any additional requests for this.

[Adriani90]

I can still reproduce this issue in Powerpoint 2016. There are lots of people trying to work in Powerpoint but there are many barriers. And many of them do not report issues. I think such a function would be very welcome even if users do not request it. Many users prefer to find alternatives instead of reporting an issue. Many of them prefer to say to the teacher or to their colleagues that this task cannot be done with the screen reader and they get another task which in many cases is not powerpoint. So if an user wants to become professional in powerpoint, this is not possible because of the barriers.

Almost in every internship in economic or management area, tasks in powerpoint are always common practice. But also in trainee programs or other introductory programs. And when we talk about consultancy for example, powerpoint becomes even more important. I hope there will be more attention paid to this application in the future.

[Adriani90]

cc: @Qchristensen

[Qchristensen]

In regards to this specific issue, I think the reason alignment isn't announced is because objects in Powerpoint do not have an alignment - they can be positioned at any edge or centred, or at any other point on the slide. Although the default is for objects to be placed with equal distance from the left and right edges, they aren't actually centred in that regard. Making it more confusing, the first object on the first slide, by default is called "Centre title placeholder".

In PowerPoint 365 at least, with an object selected, you can press alt, then j, then d, to open the object format ribbon, then a, then a again to open the alignment drop down (I don't know why people have trouble remembering ribbon keystrokes grin) to align an object.

You can also press NVDA+numpad delete (NVDA+delete in laptop layout) to report the object's location.

In terms of text formatting, if you are editing the text (press enter on the object), you can press NVDA+f to report formatting. Although it is good practice to use consistent formatting, each object is similar to a rich edit, in that it is possible to vary the font, attributes and other formatting within an object.

I wonder if we can perhaps then make this issue: When NVDA+f is pressed, check position of current object and report left / right / top / bottom aligned if it is 0cm (or whatever measurement unit is set) from that edge, and centred if the object is not against either edge (would need to check against top / bottom and left / right) but equal distance from each.

[Qchristensen]

I had a request from a user for this in terms of alignment of the text. You can use control+l, control+e, control+r or control+j to left, centre, right or justify align text. In Office 365, this is not reported, nor is the alignment reported when NVDA+f is pressed.

[Adriani90]

To be clear, this issue is not about the slide elements / placeholders aligned on the screen, but rather about the text alignment and formating within a placeholder. This issue is still reproducible in Powerpoint 365 with NVDA 2024.4 Beta.

Str:

1. Open Powerpoint,
2. Press tab on an empty slide until you land on a text element
3. Press enter to open the text placeholder
4. Enter two or more lines of text
5. Press different key strokes same as in MS Word in order to change alignment, formating and other properties of the text within the placeholder
6. Select some text within the placeholder and Press NVDA+f to check formating

Actual:

• in step 5, NVDA doesn't give any feedback.
• In step 6, NVDA informs only about font type, size, and color. No info about style, alignment etc.

Expected: In both step 5 and 6 NVDA should report coresponding info such as alignment, style etc.

cc: @CyrilleB79

[XLTechie]

@SaschaCowley or someone with higher level perms: can you please remove the "2010" from the title of this issue? Apparently it applies to newer PPT as well, and it shouldn't target an ancient version.

Feel free to delete this comment after, or I will.