Microsoft Word has been refreshed in such a way that it can now send confirmation of action for users who work in tandem with the Narrator. The actions include the success of keyboard commands attempts and also to alert users to edit corrections that have automatically been applied after typing. The confirmation of action feature is available in beta and current channel preview users of Word for Windows version 2002, which also is tagged as build number 16.0. 12527.20092 or later.
The confirmation of action enables you to know whether the attempted action was performed successfully. Microsoft integrated the feature as per the user’s feedback. The existing techniques are not credible to provide screen readers control over the display of the announcement. The methods were too noisy for Assistive Technology (AT) users. Microsoft had added a new API, which allowed apps to trigger notifications and group them by notification ID. The screen readers like Narrator applies logic to these announcements and share them as required.
Commenting on the development, Ali Forelli, Program Manager, Word disclosed that the Word team is proud to establish a partnership with the Windows Platform team to integrate the new technology. The aim of the team is to simplify the lives of users and the Confirmation of action feature is part of future innovations.
Microsoft has added confirmation of action for the following keyboard shortcuts and auto-corrections
- Cut (CTRL + X)
- Copy (CTRL + C)
- Paste (CTRL + V)
- Bold (CTRL + B)
- Italic (CTRL + I)
- Underline (CTRL + U)
- Undo (CTRL + Z)
- Redo (CTRL + Y)
- Auto capitalization
- Auto correction of spelling
Microsoft has targeted keyboard shortcuts because of its wide acceptance by screen reader users. The shortcuts are mainly used to access commands and the buttons in the ribbon are already labeled. You should note that confirmation of action notifications will not be available if the above commands are initiated from the menus. You should initiate keyboard shortcuts to work with the confirmation of action feature.
Confirmation of action Working
You should switch on Narrator by pressing the Windows+CTRL+ENTER key. You should then attempt to edit the Word document. If you perform the above-mentioned shortcuts, you will be notified when the relevant action has been successfully completed. If you highlight text and press CTRL+B key, you will hear “B bold on” or B bold off” depending upon the work you are performing. Prior to the introduction of the feature, we could only hear “B” even if the formatting was applied correctly. If you press CTRL+V, you will hear “V [last word pasted] paste” statement.
Microsoft also added support for auto-corrections that are applied to text and after finishing typing of a word. If you start a sentence without a capitalized first character and type a space character at the end of the word, the first letter will be automatically capitalized. If you are running Narrator, you will hear “auto-corrected [word]”, which implies that your previously typed word has been corrected.