Don't unnecessarily repeat row and column headers when navigating ARIA grids in focus mode.

[jcsteh]

Link to issue number:

Fixes #17750.

Summary of the issue:

When moving to an ARIA grid cell in focus mode in web browsers, NVDA previously reported both the row and column headers even if only the row or only the column changed.

Description of user facing changes:

When moving to an ARIA grid cell in focus mode in web browsers, NVDA no longer reports both the row and column headers even if only the row or only the column changed.

Description of development approach:

Previously, there were two problems:

1. After c4c3da6 (BrowseModeDocumentTextInfo.getControlFieldSpeech: Report the name of groupings (such as fieldsets) for quicknav and focus jumps, similar to how landmark labels are reported. #7435), Browse mode was updating the speech properties cache before speaking the focused object, even in focus mode. That meant that the row and column coordinates for the newly focused cell were already cached before NVDA spoke it, which made NVDA behave as if the coordinates never changed. The fix is to update the cache from the TextInfo after speaking the focused object.
2. Virtual buffers just used the IA2 unique id as the table id, but NVDAObjects use both the window handle and id, meaning that these didn't compare correctly in the speech cache. The fix is to make the vbuf normalize table ids to windowHandle and id.

Testing strategy:

In both Firefox and Edge:

Tested as described in #17750 (comment). Confirmed that this works as expected.

With the same test URL, also verified that table navigation (control+alt+arrows) still behaves correctly in browse mode.

To ensure this doesn't regress #7435, tested with the following test case:

data:text/html,
<p>before</p>
<input>
<fieldset>
<legend>fs</legend>
<label>cb <input type="checkbox"></label>
</fieldset>

1. Press control+home.
2. Press x.
   • Observe speech: "fs grouping cb check box not checked"
3. Press control+home.
4. Press tab.
5. Press tab again.
   • Observe speech: "fs grouping cb check box not checked"

Known issues with pull request:

None.

Code Review Checklist:

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

[seanbudd]

Thanks @jcsteh

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Fixes #17750 by addressing two issues that caused NVDA to repeat row/column headers when navigating ARIA grid cells in focus mode: (1) the speech cache was being updated before speaking the focused object, and (2) virtual buffers used a different table id format than NVDAObjects, preventing cache comparison.

Changes:

• In browseMode.py, reorder event_gainFocus to speak the object first and update the speech cache via speakTextInfo(..., ONLYCACHE) afterwards, so cached coordinates don't suppress row/column change reports.
• In gecko_ia2._normalizeControlField, normalize table-id to (windowHandle, uniqueId) so it matches the IAccessible NVDAObject tableID, and update _getTableCellAt to unpack the tuple via getNVDAObjectFromIdentifier(*tableID).
• Add a user changes entry for the bug fix.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
user_docs/en/changes.md	Adds a bug-fix entry describing the corrected ARIA grid header behaviour.
source/virtualBuffers/gecko_ia2.py	Normalizes vbuf table-id to a (docHandle, id) tuple and adapts _getTableCellAt to use it.
source/browseMode.py	Speaks the focused object before updating the speech cache so row/column changes are detected.