Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Ravi Gupta

Mariah Sigourney Moon

Carolina Hernandez

Lukasz Zygmunt Makar

Jason Anthony Grieves

Elbio Renato Torres Abib

Matthew Walker Campbell

Vanguri Madhuri

Sichen Lu

Colin Ray Anthony

Vipindeep Vangala

Rajasekhar Vinnakota

Wesley Allan Witt

Deepinder S Gill

Hanna Mclaughlin

Cullen Sauls

Nithin Adapa

Srinivas Chakravarthula

Jeffrey Scott Petty

Zhaoyu Li

Jeffrey Allen Bishop

Lindy Rose Le

Douglas Harold Geoffray

Martin A Mcclean

Gabriel S Martinez

Jane Jayoung Yoon

Man Hei Julia Wong

Jason P Howard

Cindy Moline

Peter E Hammerqist

Srinivasa Varadhan Thirumalai-Anandanpillai

Deepinder Singh Gill

Various embodiments discussed herein are directed to improving existing technologies by enabling users to share content items directly from an operating system component, with little to no user interface input requirements at the underlying communications application. For instance, some embodiments receive an indication that a mouse pointer is hovering over an operating system taskbar icon and automatically produce a flyout window so that a user can share a currently opened application page to other users via a selection of a button within the flyout window. Such application page may be shared via a single selection at the flyout window or an additional 'are you sure' or confirmation step. In this way, excessive drilling, navigation, and other user input at the application is reduced and simplified, thereby improving the user experience, content sharing accuracy, and computer resource consumption, among other improvements.

Operating system facilitation of content sharing

Described herein is a system and method for detecting a layout table by a screen reader. Information regarding a document being displayed by an application is received from an application programming interface of a user interface automation system that provides information regarding user interface elements of application and/or the application. The information includes an indication that the document comprises a table. A determination is made as to whether the table is a data table or a layout table based upon the received information using a rule-based heuristic. When it is determined that the table is a layout table, presentation information associated with the layout table can be skipped over, and, cell data content within the layout table provided. Thus, for a determined layout table, the system and method allow the screen reader to act as if the containing table doesn't exist, but still read the content.

Detection of layout table(s) by a screen reader

Described herein are systems and methods for determining a logical starting location to start providing (e.g., reading) content to a user. When the user navigates to a particular web page and/or email message, a screen reader can automatically read content associated with the web page and/or email message beginning at the determined logical starting location. A heuristic can be applied in order to determine the logical starting location. The heuristic can analyze information regarding user interface element(s) (e.g., property(ies) and/or attribute(s)) of the particular webpage and/or email message to find a logical location to start reading once the webpage and/or email message have loaded.

Identification of logical starting location for screen reader

Described herein is a screen reader system for providing contextually relevant information for ambiguous link(s). Input is received from a user requesting information about a particular link of a web page. In response to the received user input, a request for contextually relevant information regarding the particular link (e.g., page identifier) is provided to a search engine. The request can include a uniform resource locator (URL) associated with the particular link. Contextually relevant information regarding the particular link is received from the search engine. The received contextually relevant information is provided (e.g., displayed and/or read) to the user in response to the received request for information.

Providing contextually relevant information for ambiguous link(s)

Described herein is a screen reader providing a summary with popular link(s). The screen reader can provide a request for popular link information regarding a particular web resource to a search engine. The request can include a URL associated with the particular web resource. The request can be provided in response to a user request for a summary and/or the request can be provided based upon a user configurable setting (e.g., a quantity of popular links to be displayed). The screen reader can receive popular link information regarding the particular web resource from the search engine. The screen reader can then provide a summary comprising at least some of the received popular link information to the user. In response to selection of a particular popular link, the screen reader can redirect the browser to display a web resource associated with the particular popular link.

Screen reader summary with popular link(s)

Intelligent capture, storage, and retrieval of information for task completion are provided. A user can explicitly request to capture information, or user information is implicitly captured from one or more data streams. Semantic understanding of captured information is provided, wherein offline processes are run that analyze captured information to bucket them into a set of pre-defined high value scenarios. Whenever a capture falls into such scenarios, additional structured information about the capture is extracted. Further, aspects provide for storing and indexing information in a data repository. Users are enabled to explicitly retrieve the stored information using a natural language interface, or stored information can be proactively provided to the user based on context to enable task completion.

Intelligent capture, storage, and retrieval of information for task completion

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Ravi Gupta