Phil, I am late on this one, so maybe you got an answer.
well, since in windows, their are usually a number of ways to do something; 
here goes,
1.  Highlight the desired folder or drive.
2.  Press your context or aplication key, which is the same as the right 
mouse click.
3.  So long as you are here, see what you can do.  Their are usually a lot 
of neat and surprizing options.
4.  Back to our task, choose properties and press enter.
5.  Press enter on properties, now you will have a screen with your desired 
information.
6.  Now you will have to use your screen reader,s mouse navigation to read 
the information line by line.  I don't think this has changed since windows 
98, but it's been a long time.  If the folder is large, the lines with 
files, folders, and total space, will keep going up until they get the total 
information.  It takes time to count.