I don't know if this applies to your version of Word.  In Word Starter 2010, in the clipboard group, I have a button that says something like show clipboard task pane.  If I press the space bar on that button, I am placed on the options button.  I press the space bar and a menu opens up.  It doesn't have a disable option but it does have settings that affect how you make it come up and whether it is displayed.  If I no longer want to have the item displayed, I once again find the button in the ribbon and even though it still says show, I press the space bar again and the item is no longer shown.



Mike,

            Again, there is no real way to describe this other than visually, as that tiny arrow that points downward and to the right is part and parcel of every control group in a ribbon.  In the case of the Clipboard Grouping, the actual shortcut you want to use is ALT+H, FO  (Home Ribbon, Office Clipboard - See all the items you've copied to the clipboard).  You can think of that downward right pointing arrow at the end of each control grouping as being it's equivalent of an advanced pop-out menu.  You will land on it if you tab through any given control grouping and it will always be the thing you land on immediately prior to entering whatever the next grouping happens to be.

             In the case of the Clipboard grouping, that is just before you pass into the Font grouping.  For the Font grouping it's just before you pass into the Paragraph grouping.  In the Paragraph Grouping it's just before you pass into the Styles grouping.  In the styles grouping it's just before you enter into the Editing grouping.  The Editing grouping actually doesn't have one of these.  

             Not every grouping has one of these, and which groupings do varies by program.  For instance, in Excel the Clipboard, Font, Alignment, and Number groupings all have one of these "pop-out" controls, but the rest don't.  It seems to be a function of whether there are more options than can be shown at one time in the ribbon (or you could also think of it as whether there are advanced options not often used related to that grouping).

             Because I can see, when I was navigating the ribbon and landed on that control in the Clipboard Grouping I could hear NVDA announce it as, "Office Clipboard - See all the items you've copied to the clipboard; ALT+H,FO."  The corresponding control in the Font Grouping is reached by ALT+H,FN, and is announced as, "Font, customize your text using advanced font and character options (plus a lot more stuff); ALT+H,FN."  What the screen reader is reading is the pop-up text that shows to a sighted user if they hover over that control and that shows up in a little mouse "hover over window."  That hover-over window does not appear when you land on the control via tabbing or arrowing, but if you linger for a moment the exact text that I see if I hover over is what the screen reader reads.

             The only way I can tell you to identify these controls is to use CTRL+Left or Right arrow to move between control groupings, then SHIFT+TAB to jump back to the last control within the last control grouping.  It becomes obvious pretty quickly, just based on the amount of verbiage involved, whether the thing you've landed on is one of these pop-out controls for a grouping or one of the normal controls within that grouping.  There is no real "shorthand name" for these things, and since the text is unique to each one, that's why the downward right pointing arrow is used in those instructions.

              Give the above a try and see what you find.

--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

Always remember that computers are just glorified light bulbs - they rarely fail in continuous use and usually go pop when turned off and on.

        ~ Technician with the username Computer Bloke, on Technibble.com

I should have corrected my first sentence in my last message to read, "part and parcel of most control groupings," rather than "all control groupings."  There are more that have them as the last control than don't.
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Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

Always remember that computers are just glorified light bulbs - they rarely fail in continuous use and usually go pop when turned off and on.

        ~ Technician with the username Computer Bloke, on Technibble.com

I don't know but usually such symbols have words associated with them in menus or ribbons. You often see instructions to click the gear icon in menus and that is the icon for what our screen-reader says is tools, that is the tools menu. I think sighted people see the worrd tools so I don't know why the description of the gear icon is preferred. Others may be able to explain such matters. So in this case, I don't know what you will find but you will probably find something that has words that most likely match what you are trying to do. Why that icon is used is something I don't know. Maybe someone will. Screen-readers often say question mark at a help menu but that is clearly not what is meant here. Perhaps it implies a question like what do you want to do.

Gene

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 10:08 PM, Gene wrote:

I don't know but usually such symbols have words associated with them in menus or ribbons.

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Gene, you are correct.  But you are correct because you say "usually."

I can tell you, without question, this is an exception, and they do exist.  There truly are times when there is no substitute for vision, and when a single symbol in a given complex system is reused, again and again, for different functions there will be no "set words" that will be reliably associated with same.  This is one of those cases.
 
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

Always remember that computers are just glorified light bulbs - they rarely fail in continuous use and usually go pop when turned off and on.

        ~ Technician with the username Computer Bloke, on Technibble.com