People who work with the Excel spreadsheet app on Windows who might have some visual impairment issues likely use the Narrator screen reader feature found in the Windows OS. Today, Microsoft announced some new Narrator improvements made specifically for the Excel Windows app.
In a blog post, Microsoft says the Windows team has put in a new experiment Narrator feature in Excel that will optimize how Narrator handles its screen reader statements based on specific scenarios. It states:
Before the update, Narrator used to say “A1, selected, editable, column 2 row 2, item, test, cell” when you navigated to cell A1 with data called test. Now it simply says “test, A1.” This saves time for people who use screen readers, and makes skimming a workbook to find the right information more efficient.
Some of the other ways the new Narrator improvements work with the Windows Excel app are as follows:
- More succinct reading when navigating in the grid and selecting cells, both within tables and in spreadsheets that do not use tables.
- Explicit announcements if a cell is blank.
- Succinct, explicit announcements when cells contain non-text or unclear information like conditional formatting, data validation, and formulas.
- Better handling of merged cells.
- More information about collaborators on cells that someone else has selected or is editing.
- Customizable order of announcements for grid cells (e.g., “A1 blank” vs “blank A1”).
The new Narrator improvements are available with the latest Excel for Windows update that launched in September. Users can turn Narrator on in Excel by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Windows + Enter.
Earlier this month, Microsoft revealed it had rolled out some other improvements for Excel users on both Windows and Mac platforms. Users in those apps now have more control so they could shut down certain types of automatic data conversion.