Automatically report headers in Excel tables when using UI Automation

[michaelDCurran]

Link to issue number:

None.

Summary of the issue:

When accessing Microsoft Excel via UI Automation and moving through a table in a spreadsheet, NVDA does not automatically report row and column headers for the currently focused cell.

Description of user facing changes

NVDA will now automatically report the row and column headers for the currently focused cell in an Excel table via UI Automation, if the row / column header is different from the last focused cell, and the spreadsheet author has enabled a header row and special first column.

Description of development approach

• ExcelCell UIA NVDAObject: don't explicitly set columnHeaderText and rowHeaderText properties to None. This was done during prototyping and was never removed.
• UIA NVDAObject: implement the tableID property which then allows the code that reports column and row headers to correctly identify when still in the same table and therefore can stop repeting the same column and row header if it is the same as the last focused cell.

Testing strategy:

Open example colors Excel spreadsheet in Excel.

• Ensure NVDA's Access Microsoft Excel using UI Automation advanced setting is set to yes.
• Ensure that NvDA's report table headers setting in document settings panel is set to row / column
• arrow around the color table in the spreadsheet, confirming that the column header (name, red colponent, blue component) is only reported when the focus changes columns, and that the row header (purple, yellow, white etc) is only reported when the focus changes rows.

Known issues with pull request:

None known.

Change log entries:

New features

• Microsoft Excel via UI Automation: Automatic reporting of column and row headers in tables.
  Changes
  Bug fixes
  For Developers

Code Review Checklist:

• Pull Request description:
  • description is up to date
  • change log entries
• Testing:
  • Unit tests
  • System (end to end) tests
  • Manual testing
• API is compatible with existing add-ons.
• Documentation:
  • User Documentation
  • Developer / Technical Documentation
  • Context sensitive help for GUI changes
• UX of all users considered:
  • Speech
  • Braille
  • Low Vision
  • Different web browsers
  • Localization in other languages / culture than English
• Security precautions taken.

[seanbudd]

Does this close #13721?

[michaelDCurran]

No, as this pr only deals with Excel tables, not free data in a spreadsheet. In #13721, it is referring to special screen reader -specific name ranges used for marking cells as column or row headers. Excel's UI Automation implementation knows nothing of these screen reader specific column and row headers, and standard UI Automation does not provide a way of looking up named ranges in Excel. However, it is possible that the UIA custom extensions for Excel may support looking up named ranges, which I will need to look into in the future, but that is separate work from supporting (real) column and row headers on Excel tables, which is now the preferred modern way of marking up data for everyone, not just screen readers.