{"id":5894,"date":"2021-02-04T14:25:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T22:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/officedevblogs.wpengine.com\/?p=5894"},"modified":"2021-02-04T14:25:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T22:25:46","slug":"use-ui-automation-custom-properties-to-customize-your-assistive-technologies-to-office-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/use-ui-automation-custom-properties-to-customize-your-assistive-technologies-to-office-applications\/","title":{"rendered":"Use UI Automation custom properties to customize your assistive technologies to Office applications"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Announcing support for UI Automation custom properties in Excel and PowerPoint<\/h3>\n<p>Office applications on Windows have added support for <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/uiauto-custompropertieseventscontrolpatterns\">UI Automation custom properties<\/a> so that assistive technologies have access to application-specific information through UI Automation, and you can improve your users\u2019 experience for those applications. For example, you can improve the usability and efficiency in the PowerPoint slide show and editing experiences by using the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/office\/uia\/powerpoint\/powerpointcustomproperties\"><u>ViewType<\/u> <\/a>custom property on the Pane element, and customizing for each view.<\/p>\n<h3>Using the platform accessibility API<\/h3>\n<p>People with disabilities often rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers to access the digital world. <a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/office\/use-a-screen-reader-and-keyboard-shortcuts-with-office-apps-4aba5a56-f80c-4a6b-a584-d0f415471617\">Office works with assistive technologies<\/a> using the platform accessibility API, which is <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/uiauto-uiautomationoverview\">UI Automation<\/a> on Windows. The Office applications are <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/uiauto-providerportal\">UI Automation Providers<\/a> and work well with assistive technologies that are <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/uiauto-clientportal\">UI Automation Clients<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Office in Application Guard availability<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/office\/application-guard-for-office-9e0fb9c2-ffad-43bf-8ba3-78f785fdba46\">Office in Application Guard<\/a> is now available to organizations who have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/microsoft-365\/enterprise\">Microsoft 365 E5<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/microsoft-365\/enterprise-mobility-security\/compare-plans-and-pricing\">Microsoft 365 E5 Mobility + Security<\/a> licenses. In an isolated container such as <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/windows\/security\/threat-protection\/microsoft-defender-application-guard\/md-app-guard-overview\">Microsoft Defender Application Guard<\/a>, assistive technologies are only able to interact with applications using UI Automation and not by calling the applications&#8217; APIs. Custom properties enable assistive technologies to get the application-specific information they need without having to call the applications&#8217; APIs. Currently, UI Automation custom properties are available only in Excel and PowerPoint on the desktop.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-5905\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/02\/UIAutomationCustomProperties-1024x419.png\" alt=\"Diagram: Assistive Technology can't call the application in the isolated container. But Assistive Technology can get custom properties from UI Automation. Excel and PowerPoint provide custom properties in UI Automation.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/02\/UIAutomationCustomProperties-1024x419.png 1024w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/02\/UIAutomationCustomProperties-300x123.png 300w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/02\/UIAutomationCustomProperties-768x314.png 768w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/02\/UIAutomationCustomProperties.png 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Learn more about using <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/office\/uia\/\">UI Automation Custom Extensions in Office<\/a> to customize your assistive technologies to Office applications and work well with Office in Application Guard.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Wu<\/p>\n<p>Peter is a Principal Software Engineer on the Office PowerPoint team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, we announce that Office applications on Windows have added support for UI Automation custom properties in PowerPoint and Excel so that assistive technologies have access to application-specific information through UI Automation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69076,"featured_media":25159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-5894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-office-add-ins","tag-excel"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Today, we announce that Office applications on Windows have added support for UI Automation custom properties in PowerPoint and Excel so that assistive technologies have access to application-specific information through UI Automation.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}