Hi, Insiders! I’m Shireen Salma, a Product Manager on the Office Accessibility team. I’m excited to share some new improvements to Microsoft Word for Windows that make keyboard and screen reader navigation for comments more efficient and intuitive.
Improved keyboard and Narrator support for comments in Word for Windows
At Microsoft, we believe great design starts with listening to feedback – both from you, our customers, but also from our peers.
This feature was born from feedback shared by Brett Humphrey, a Principal Program Manager on the Teams team and a screen reader user. While reviewing a document, Brett pointed out how challenging it was to efficiently read and navigate through comments using a screen reader. That feedback led us to take a closer look at how comment interaction worked, especially with Narrator, and how we could improve upon it. We also heard similar feedback from David Kingsbury, an accessibility consultant and author, which reinforced the need for a more seamless experience. As we worked on the design, we partnered with Doug Geoffray, who brings over 40 years of experience designing for the blind and low vision community and helped us refine the details to deliver a more inclusive experience for all users.
What’s changed
When navigating a document and the insertion point is within text that contains a comment, you can press Alt + F12 to move into the contextual comment card. Once focused on the card, we’ve introduced a few enhancements to make collaboration easier. These updates benefit keyboard users and enhance compatibility across Narrator, JAWS, and NVDA:
- Smarter use of Home/End: The Home and End keys now behave contextually. Depending on where your focus is – on a comment card, comment thread, or section of text – using the Home or End key now moves you to the beginning or end of that section respectively, making navigation much more seamless.
- More intuitive Esc behavior: Pressing Esc now reliably moves focus back through your workflow, from thread to card, and from card to canvas – rather than sending you directly back to the canvas – helping you stay oriented.
- Refined Tab order in expanded comment cards: Tab stops are now logically grouped, and there are fewer tab stops to limit interruptions: They’ll first navigate to the comment in the thread (for example, “Comment 2 of 5”), then thread actions (such as Like or Edit comment), then the @mention or reply field.
- Cross-page navigation in contextual view: You can now navigate seamlessly across comments in contextual view, even when they span across pages, using the down arrow key. Previously, pressing the down arrow key would stop at the end of a page.
- New Narrator shortcut: For users reading documents with Narrator, we’ve introduced a powerful new shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + ’. This simple shortcut lets users hear the full context of a comment, such as the comment author’s name, any assigned task, and the number of replies (if applicable) – all without having to leave the canvas or shift focus. If the focus is already on a comment card, pressing the same shortcut reads out the commented text range, so users always know what part of the document the comment refers to. If there’s no comment on the selected text, Narrator will announce that clearly, removing any guesswork.
See Use a screen reader to add, read, and delete comments in Word for more details about the overall keyboard experience.
Availability
The new and improved keyboard and Narrator experience is available to Word for Windows users running Version 2511 (Build 19422.20000) or later.
Feedback
We’d love to hear how these updates are working! Select the Feedback button in the upper right-hand corner of Word, then select either Give a compliment, Report a problem, or Make a suggestion to share your thoughts.
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