Remove carriage return and bell character from table header information in IAccessible MS Word

[SaschaCowley]

Link to issue number:

Closes #7212

Summary of the issue:

When accessing Microsoft Word via IAccessible, column and row headers set with the set row/column header scripts in NVDA have '\r\a' at the end of them. While this does not seem to be an issue for speech (presumably synths just ignore control characters), these characters were being output in braille.

Description of user facing changes

Extraneous output is no longer produced.

Description of development approach

Modified NVDAObjects.IAccessible.winword.WordDocument.fetchAssociatedHeaderCellText to drop '\r\a' if it was a suffix to any of the row or column headers' text.

Testing strategy:

Manual:

• set Use UI Automation to access Microsoft Word document controls to Only when necessary in NVDA's Advanced settings.
• Created a 2x2 table in Word, entered text into the row and column headers, and executed the "Set column header" and "Set row header" commands in the top left cell.
• Navigated the table in focus and browse mode, noting the output.

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.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Improved handling of caret movement using events, enhancing support for various text controls and browsers.

• Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where NVDA displayed garbage characters in braille when accessing Microsoft Word table headers without UI Automation.

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

The recent changes to NVDA involve improving the handling of header text in Microsoft Word tables by filtering out unwanted characters, specifically the carriage return and bell characters, from the displayed text. This enhancement ensures that braille output is cleaner and more accurate, addressing specific issues that users have encountered with table navigation and header reading in Word.

Changes

File	Change Summary
source/NVDAObjects/IAccessible/...	Modified fetchAssociatedHeaderCellText to filter out carriage return and bell characters.
user_docs/en/changes.md	Updated documentation to reflect improvements in caret movement handling and braille output.

Sequence Diagram(s)

Silently ignored due to simplicity and specificity of the changes.

Assessment against linked issues

Objective	Addressed	Explanation
Filter BELL character (0x07) from Braille output when using Word column/row headers (#7212)	✅

The change effectively addresses the issue of unwanted characters in the braille output, improving the NVDA experience for users working with Word tables.

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Actionable comments posted: 1