Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When using the "Use UI Automation for Word controls" enhanced setting, reading messages in Outlook exposes way more information, and is more performant, than if this setting is off. However, in newsletters, layout tables are often used to place images or headers, or add other eye candy. With UIA for Word enabled, each and every table, nested and otherwise, is reported. This makes reading newsletters a real pain.
Describe the solution you'd like
NVDA should apply some heuristics when reading messages in Outlook to suppress tables that are clearly for layout. It already has some heuristics to determine layout tables, and if needed, could also take some inspiration for how Firefox determines if a table is a layout table. Especially those tables that only have one column and/or row are clearly not data tables and could be suppressed safely.
Describe alternatives you've considered
There aren't really any, since turning off UIA for Word makes the reading experience in Outlook far worse because of performance. Such newsletters suddenly take one to two seconds for each press of the DownArrow to read the next line and refresh the braille display. So the only way is to make UIA in Word the default, and if that's the case, also add some heuristics to suppress layout tables when reading.
Additional context
This came from a discussion with acquaintances who claimed that NVDA was still not ready for most workplace scenarios due to poor outlook support. I did some comparative testing between JAWS and NVDA, and besides the performance improvements I got when I turned on UIA for Word Controls, found this to be a real blocker for most users.
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When using the "Use UI Automation for Word controls" enhanced setting, reading messages in Outlook exposes way more information, and is more performant, than if this setting is off. However, in newsletters, layout tables are often used to place images or headers, or add other eye candy. With UIA for Word enabled, each and every table, nested and otherwise, is reported. This makes reading newsletters a real pain.
Describe the solution you'd like
NVDA should apply some heuristics when reading messages in Outlook to suppress tables that are clearly for layout. It already has some heuristics to determine layout tables, and if needed, could also take some inspiration for how Firefox determines if a table is a layout table. Especially those tables that only have one column and/or row are clearly not data tables and could be suppressed safely.
Describe alternatives you've considered
There aren't really any, since turning off UIA for Word makes the reading experience in Outlook far worse because of performance. Such newsletters suddenly take one to two seconds for each press of the DownArrow to read the next line and refresh the braille display. So the only way is to make UIA in Word the default, and if that's the case, also add some heuristics to suppress layout tables when reading.
Additional context
This came from a discussion with acquaintances who claimed that NVDA was still not ready for most workplace scenarios due to poor outlook support. I did some comparative testing between JAWS and NVDA, and besides the performance improvements I got when I turned on UIA for Word Controls, found this to be a real blocker for most users.