dotnet / dotnet/winforms

[A11Y] Screen Reader doesn't announce what control gets focused

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#12,217 16 comments 2 reactions 1 assignee Claimed by @Tanya-Solyanik View on GitHub
area-VSDesigner tracking
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Description

### Environment

VisualStudio.17.Preview/17.11.0-pre.5.0+35118.90

### .NET version

8.0

### Did this work in a previous version of Visual Studio and/or previous .NET release?

No, never in the out of process designer

### Issue description

When the out of process designer has focus and you try to move between the controls on the form screen readers aren't able to detect the focus change and are therefore quiet.
This makes it impossible to work with the designer in a sufficient way.
You can press F4 to focus the property editor and tab to the components combo to select the component you want to work with but that's extremely insufficient.

### Steps to reproduce

1. Start a screen reader like Narrator, NVDA or JAWS.
2. Start Visual Studio and create a new WinForms application targeting .NET 8.
3. Press Ctrl +Alt + L to focus the Solution Manager and navigate to the form Form1 and press Enter to open it.
4. Press Esc to ensure you're in the designer and at the top level, i e on the form.
5. Press Alt + V, X and press Enter to open the Toolbox.
6. Type Button and press Enter to add a button to the form.
7. Press Esc a couple of times to be really sure you're at the form level.
8. Press Tab to focus the button.

The screen reader doesn't announce that the button got focused.

### Diagnostics

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

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