enable Accessibility Tree on macOS in the new Teams (work or school)

[godbout]

hello! so i build apps for macOS that use the AX Tree exposed by other apps. in the old Teams, i was able to expose the AX Tree by sending a call to Teams (see https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/accessibility#macos for more info). it doesn't work anymore in the new Teams. there's another flag that can be sent to apps, but it doesn't work either. the new Teams doesn't expose its AX Tree to my calls. but i **KNOW** it is possible to expose it, because i've found at least one third party app that is able to do so. so, my question, what needs to be done to the new Teams so that i can have access to the AX Tree with my own apps?

thank you!

[#2]

Hello,
We are mainly responsible for Microsoft Teams app development related issues.

For Microsoft Teams product issues/failures your tenant Admin can reach out to Microsoft 365 Product Support.

For general questions about Microsoft Teams please post your question on Microsoft Teams Community.

[#3]

You can also raise your feature/feedback in Teams UserVoice.

Microsoft will always focus on customer’s feedback and experience. Some new features would be added to the services based on customers' feedback in the future, and your good ideas will be very helpful for them to improve the service.

[#4]

@ChetanSharma-msft thanks for the answer. but my question is directly targeted at Teams' developers. this is definitely not something that can be understood or explained by a sales, or users. it's quite technical and specific. thanks.

[#5]

hmm, thank you, but again the feature is already here in Teams. it just needs to be "activated" somehow. so it's not like i need UserVoice to do something new. i just need to know how to get Teams starting exposing its AX Tree, which it does already when using the macOS Accessibility Inspector or VoiceOver. thanks.

[#6]

Hey @godbout,

Have you found a solution? I’ve been able to navigate through the AX tree of Microsoft Teams from my macOS Swift app, but the results are unstable. It only works if the Accessibility Inspector is open, which somehow refreshes it occasionally. When I turn off the inspector, it no longer queries the UI content, even though the content is still visible on the screen and accessible to the VoiceOver app.

[#7]

@soyunagi you need basically to do what Accessibility Inspector is doing. but most probably it might use private APIs. so the key is to reverse-engineer the whole **bleep**. it's another universe. good luck.

[#8]

Thanks, @godbout.

Yeah, that's tricky, as it's not really clear what the AX inspector does on the background.

I do use standard Apple's AX APIs via Swift on macOS, and as you say there might be some private ones that I am not aware of. Also awaiting reply from Apple Dev support to learn more.

The behavior can be also related to how Microsoft Teams exposes its accessibility data, likely due to how the app seems to be implemented on top of Electron.