1. nvda@nvda.groups.io
Topics

Reading chats in MS Teams

Vaibhav Saraf
 

Hi Community,

When on MS Teams I used to toggle to browse mode and read all the chats using Shift + 4 or just 4 as all the chats used to be heading level 4. In an update done around last week, MS Teams no longer marks chats as H4. I need to arrow up/down to read the chats which is a very inconvenient and slow method to do. The focus mode did not work really well for me as there I do not have the capability to read the chat word by word or letter by letter if I want to.

Is there a better way to read the chats now?

Thanks,
Vaibhav
Sylvie Duchateau
 

Hello,

I just tested in a chat on MS Teams.

The problem is that NVDA switches automatically in forms mode when you are in the chat.

So when you type 4, you cannot get to the message heading.

You need to return to browse mode and type 4 or h.

The headings structure is still there but Microsoft seems to have implemented automatically switching in forms mode.

I don’t know why.

Best

Sylvie

De : nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> De la part de Vaibhav Saraf via groups.io
Envoyé : vendredi 15 janvier 2021 07:22
À : nvda@nvda.groups.io
Objet : [nvda] Reading chats in MS Teams

 

Hi Community,

 

When on MS Teams I used to toggle to browse mode and read all the chats using Shift + 4 or just 4 as all the chats used to be heading level 4. In an update done around last week, MS Teams no longer marks chats as H4. I need to arrow up/down to read the chats which is a very inconvenient and slow method to do. The focus mode did not work really well for me as there I do not have the capability to read the chat word by word or letter by letter if I want to.

 

Is there a better way to read the chats now?


Thanks,

Vaibhav

 
Vaibhav Saraf
 

Hi,

I am afraid your Teams is not updated to the latest one. Even after returning to browse mode I cannot find chats in H4.

Thanks,
Vaibhav


On Fri, 15 Jan 2021 at 14:17, Sylvie Duchateau <sduchateau@...> wrote:

Hello,

I just tested in a chat on MS Teams.

The problem is that NVDA switches automatically in forms mode when you are in the chat.

So when you type 4, you cannot get to the message heading.

You need to return to browse mode and type 4 or h.

The headings structure is still there but Microsoft seems to have implemented automatically switching in forms mode.

I don’t know why.

Best

Sylvie

De : nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> De la part de Vaibhav Saraf via groups.io
Envoyé : vendredi 15 janvier 2021 07:22
À : nvda@nvda.groups.io
Objet : [nvda] Reading chats in MS Teams

 

Hi Community,

 

When on MS Teams I used to toggle to browse mode and read all the chats using Shift + 4 or just 4 as all the chats used to be heading level 4. In an update done around last week, MS Teams no longer marks chats as H4. I need to arrow up/down to read the chats which is a very inconvenient and slow method to do. The focus mode did not work really well for me as there I do not have the capability to read the chat word by word or letter by letter if I want to.

 

Is there a better way to read the chats now?


Thanks,

Vaibhav

 
Sylvie Duchateau
 

Hello again,

I found a workaround to navigate from message to message in Teams with NVDA.

You should create a profile for Teams in NVDA.

  1. Open Teams.
  2. Open the profile settings with ctrl+NVDA+P
  3. Tab to new, or press alt+n.
  4. Use tab to choose which profile you want to use and press right arrow to select that the profile is related to Teams, you will hear profile name Teams, or something similar.
  5. Tab until the Ok button and press enter.
  6. Modify the profile in going to browse mode in pressing nvda+ctrl+B.
  7. I unchecked all checkboxes related to forms mode and automatically switching. May be you can test in checking and unchecking the three boxes and see if something changes. “automatic focus mode for caret movement”, “automatic focus mode for focus changes” and “automatically set system focus to focusable elements” and Press Ok.
  8. When you want to write in the chat, you will have to activate forms mode in pressing nvda+space and when you want to read the chat messages, go out of the forms mode manually with the same shortcut.

I hope this will also work for you.

Best

Sylvie

 

De : nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> De la part de Sylvie Duchateau via groups.io
Envoyé : vendredi 15 janvier 2021 09:48
À : nvda@nvda.groups.io
Objet : Re: [nvda] Reading chats in MS Teams

 

Hello,

I just tested in a chat on MS Teams.

The problem is that NVDA switches automatically in forms mode when you are in the chat.

So when you type 4, you cannot get to the message heading.

You need to return to browse mode and type 4 or h.

The headings structure is still there but Microsoft seems to have implemented automatically switching in forms mode.

I don’t know why.

Best

Sylvie

De : nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> De la part de Vaibhav Saraf via groups.io
Envoyé : vendredi 15 janvier 2021 07:22
À : nvda@nvda.groups.io
Objet : [nvda] Reading chats in MS Teams

 

Hi Community,

 

When on MS Teams I used to toggle to browse mode and read all the chats using Shift + 4 or just 4 as all the chats used to be heading level 4. In an update done around last week, MS Teams no longer marks chats as H4. I need to arrow up/down to read the chats which is a very inconvenient and slow method to do. The focus mode did not work really well for me as there I do not have the capability to read the chat word by word or letter by letter if I want to.

 

Is there a better way to read the chats now?


Thanks,

Vaibhav

 
Luke Robinett
 

I use teams extensively on a daily basis at my job and it seems to work just fine for me. I’ll describe what I’m doing and you tell me where your experience differs.
If I want to chat with somebody from my chat history, I press control 2 which takes me to the recent chat list. I use the up and down arrow keys to find the chat I want and then hit enter to open it. This puts focus in the text box of that chat. If I press shift tab I land inside the messages area. I press NVDA spacebar to enter forms mode. While in forms mode, I can simply use the up and down arrow keys to move easily from message to message. Pressing enter on a message gives me reactions and while in that screen, pressing tab gets me a menu with more options. Hitting escape a few times gets me back to the main messages list.
If you haven’t already, I recommend studying and learning the Microsoft teams shortcut keys because they are extremely useful. Hope that helps. If I’m not addressing your question, let me know where I went wrong.
Vaibhav Saraf
 

Hi,

This experience works fine for me. But the problem is that when I go through the messages in forms mode I cannot make out the chat word by word or letter by letter if I have difficulty understanding the message, or sometimes it can be a link and I would copy it using Ctrl + Shift + right arrow.

Earlier Teams was treating all the messages as H4, so navigation was quite easy even in browse mode, and allowing me to go letter by letter and stuff.

Thanks,
Vaibhav




On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 01:17, Luke Robinett <blindgroupsluke@...> wrote:
I use teams extensively on a daily basis at my job and it seems to work just fine for me. I’ll describe what I’m doing and you tell me where your experience differs.
If I want to chat with somebody from my chat history, I press control 2 which takes me to the recent chat list. I use the up and down arrow keys to find the chat I want and then hit enter to open it. This puts focus in the text box of that chat. If I press shift tab I land inside the messages area. I press NVDA spacebar to enter forms mode. While in forms mode, I can simply use the up and down arrow keys to move easily from message to message. Pressing enter on a message gives me reactions and while in that screen, pressing tab gets me a menu with more options. Hitting escape a few times gets me back to the main messages list.
If you haven’t already, I recommend studying and learning the Microsoft teams shortcut keys because they are extremely useful. Hope that helps. If I’m not addressing your question, let me know where I went wrong.
Luke Robinett
 

OK, got it. Here are a couple suggestions:

For accessing the link in a message, press enter on the message and then press tab twice. This should place focus on the link.

To review a message word by word or character by character, use the object review keys (with numlock turned off):

Numpad 7 and 9 to move between lines

Numpad 4 and 6 to move between words

Numpad 1 and 3 to move by character

To copy text, position the review cursor at the desired start point and press NVDA + F9. Next position the review cursor at the end of the text you want to copy and press NVDA + F10 twice rapidly. This copies it to the clipboard.

 

Hope this helps,

Luke

 

From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Vaibhav Saraf
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2021 7:45 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Reading chats in MS Teams

 

Hi,

 

This experience works fine for me. But the problem is that when I go through the messages in forms mode I cannot make out the chat word by word or letter by letter if I have difficulty understanding the message, or sometimes it can be a link and I would copy it using Ctrl + Shift + right arrow.

 

Earlier Teams was treating all the messages as H4, so navigation was quite easy even in browse mode, and allowing me to go letter by letter and stuff.

 

Thanks,

Vaibhav

 

 

 

 

On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 01:17, Luke Robinett <blindgroupsluke@...> wrote:

I use teams extensively on a daily basis at my job and it seems to work just fine for me. I’ll describe what I’m doing and you tell me where your experience differs.

If I want to chat with somebody from my chat history, I press control 2 which takes me to the recent chat list. I use the up and down arrow keys to find the chat I want and then hit enter to open it. This puts focus in the text box of that chat. If I press shift tab I land inside the messages area. I press NVDA spacebar to enter forms mode. While in forms mode, I can simply use the up and down arrow keys to move easily from message to message. Pressing enter on a message gives me reactions and while in that screen, pressing tab gets me a menu with more options. Hitting escape a few times gets me back to the main messages list.

If you haven’t already, I recommend studying and learning the Microsoft teams shortcut keys because they are extremely useful. Hope that helps. If I’m not addressing your question, let me know where I went wrong.
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