Feature: navigation between element atributes such as color, font, style and other document formatting atributes.

[Adriani90]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Take an MS excel sheet with cells of different background color filled with text of different colors
2. Try to navigate between background red cells since it is allowed to fill only in red cells

Expected behavior:
Adding certain settings to the settings ring would solve this issue by doing following:

1. Integrate document formatting to the ring (colors, font etc). It would be much
   intuitive to change between formating elements out of the ring and to go to
   the menu just when you need more information at the same time
2. New cathegory in the ring settings called for example "say color". You could change say color to
   yellow out of the ring
3. In the menu you could atribute a key to the
   browse mode (for example y) to jump between background yellow cells / surface
4. You could add another key (say x) to jump between yellow highlighted text
5. You could let y and x to
   be the standard keys for every color you choose from the "say color"
   cathegory. If you want NVDA to say all colors, than you go through the ring
   to document formatting and change to colors. In that case NVDA would say all
   colors and y and x would still navigate you through the color which you chose in
   the "say color" section of the ring.

This could also work for other formatting features like font (areal, time
new romans etc) or type (bold, italic etc.). It would also work in word,
outlook or even in browsers and it would improve NVDA significantly.

Actual behavior:
The potential of NVDA to recognize and navigate between diferent formating elements is very high but it is not used as much as it could be. The flexibility for the user is very low.

System configuration:
NVDA version:
all

NVDA Installed or portable:
both

Other information:
Windows version:
all

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

Other questions:

Does the issue still occur after restarting your PC?
yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA?
yes, all

[Adriani90]

I have an additional suggestion.

In order to make this as interactive as possible, the ring of settings could be dynamic. That means for example if I choose Colors in the document formating section, then a new entry called "say color" is being generated. If I chosse font, then the "say color" section is now "say font". The standard keys could still remain y and x.
If I select "nothing" in the document formating section, then no new entry is being generated.

[ehollig]

If I understand you correctly, you would like the ability to jump to the next and previous instance of the same font type. So, possibly add a unbound script to navigate to the next and previous font attribute, color, name, etc.
Personally, I am not in favor in having a long list of options in the quick settings ring as I feel that this could be achieved with configuration profiles and possibly the implementation of #4209. But of course, that all depends on what NVAccess thinks. CC @feerrenrut

[Adriani90]

But then I have to remember every time which profile was set for which color to press the right keystroke. If I have 10 profiles because I have an excel where I have to fill in the red cells, a pdf where I have to search for purple track change, a word document where I have to search for yellow highlighted text, a browser page where I have to solve a webinar and so on, there are too many keystrokes which I have to notice. And maybe I need some more for other colors and font types. And every time I have to create a new profile or to edit another profile. That is far too much for an usual user. I mean, NV Access or anyone here could do both. Adjusting the ring settings and allowing flexible profile-based settings.

[zersiax]

Sounds to me like what the OP is asking for is akin to the speech rotor on iOS. I.E., allow user to add/remote certain settings from the settings ring and also add context-sensitive options to the ring when applicable, i.e. if report color is on you could dynamically add the option to move between font changes; moving to every different color in the given document will probably not be feasible though.
I like that idea to some degree, except the navigation through the settings ring, I think the mixing oftwo navigational paradigms might confuse new users and adopting the settings ring for all navigation would annoy power users. The idea isn't bad, we'd need to implement it correctly though.

[Adriani90]

Why should that not be feasible? If NVDA knows which part of the text is green and which one is red, than it could navigate to that. The ability is there. We just have to implement it. It is the same when you try to navigate between edit fields. They are properly definded. Colors, fonts and text types are defined as well. For example if I have an excel sheet with cells of different colors, the colors are the same when I convert that sheet in to a pdf document. So where exactly could then be the problem?

As far as the settings ring is concerned, I have given some courses for NVDA in Germany. All users are really lucky about this feature because they hear what they can adjust in the ring without going to the menu. They don't have to remember where to find this and that. And the best thing is, they stay in their work windows and don't have to change it to go in to the menu. The cursor stay at the position where you want it to be even when you change colors and so on. Especially in pdf and browsers in browse mode there is the issue that the cursor position goes lost when you go into the menu. If the ring is flexible, then they could simply remove settings from it if they don't need it.

And please think about all screen readers which will be comming in the future. If every one does his own keystrokes then we have to learn whole books by hard to be able to work productively with a screenreader. See this link:

http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/SCREEN.html

Do we really need so many key strokes? At least the gestures for touch screens are somehow similar.

NVDA has this big advantage and it should be aware of that in my opinion.

[Adriani90]

slightly edited

[LeonarddeR]

@Adriani90 Could you upload the title of this issue to more appropriately reflect what its intention is?