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What's turning VoiceOver on?

I support my mom's new (early 2011 21.5" i5) iMac from several states away. I set it up for her when I was last visiting her. (I eventually want to get screen sharing happening so I can actually see what's happening on her machine, but that's another thread.)


I downloaded and installed Firefox 4 while I was there for her to use as her primary browser.


After I returned home she called me reporting a problem, specifically, that Firefox was reporting the following alert: "Firefox has new window." What I didn't realize at the time was that the machine was speaking the alert to her, apparently via VoiceOver. I thought she just didn't know what to do with the alert. I personally have never seen such an alert, and I use Fx all the time (although still on 3.6).


I googled the alert text and came up with a few other discussion threads, all dealing with the problem of a talking Mac. Not understanding that the computer was speaking to her, I ignored the threads assuming that wasn't the problem. Turns out I was wrong, her machine was indeed speaking to her, and I'm pretty sure that specific alert text, "Firefox has new window" (those exact words, including the grammatical issue) is VoiceOver UI not Firefox UI.


I know **** well that neither she nor I turned on VoiceOver on purpose. It's possible (barely) that she could have mistakenly pressed the cmd-F5 combo to activate VO, but I doubt it. It's not like the keys are right next to each other; I don't know why she'd hit cmd-5, and she has no real reason to interact with the function keys. It's also possible that the other users with the problems who posted to various discussion threads (including this one) also hit that key combo by accident, but I also doubt that somewhat, for similar reasons.


One thing I've noticed (including in the thread I linked above) is that "Firefox has new window" is a common theme in all these complaints. Of course, that's largely because that was my search string, so to that extent it's unremarkable, but I'm beginning to wonder if Firefox (or associated software such as its updater) might somehow be activating VO without the user intending it. Try as I might, with VO on and mucking around in Firefox, I've been unable to get my own machine to say those exact words or anything reasonably close to them, so I'm at the end of my road so far in tracking down the problem. My mother mostly uses the web to check email, and I know that her (AT&T/Yahoo webmail) interface displays messages in a new "tab" (not a Firefox tab, a tab-within-the-tab or tab-within-the-Yahoo-Mail-window) by default when clicking the subject line. I suspect that's triggering the message.


We have VO off now. I have no idea if it might come on again. Is it at all possible that Firefox, or the updater, be turning on VO? Or do I have to try something else? Many thanks.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7), iMac i5 21.5" (early 2011)

Posted on Jul 6, 2011 9:08 PM

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5 replies

Jul 6, 2011 10:36 PM in response to Joel Siegel

To avoid a keyboard mis-press from accidentally activating VoiceOver, open the Keyboard prefs pane in System Preferences, click the Keyboard Shortcuts button. Then click the Universal Access item in the left column and see if VoiceOver is checked in the right column; if it is, uncheck it.


Unchecking it there should also prevent anything else from activating it via a Command-F5 signal/code.

Jul 6, 2011 11:19 PM in response to Don Archibald

I'm sure that combo is enabled on my mother's machine, since it's enabled by default on both of mine (and all running SL).


As I mentioned, although it's possible that my mother (and other users) unintentionally hit the somewhat unusual and hard-to-hit-by-accident Cmd-F5 combo, I think it's doubtful. Your post, though, raises the possibility that some piece of software could be sending a Cmd-F5 signal or code to some part of the OS. Would that be the most likely mechanism? Or would it be some other bit of code elsewhere in a program? I suspect the latter rather than the former but I'm out of my depth at that point.

Jul 7, 2011 12:59 AM in response to Joel Siegel

For it to be VoiceOver getting activated, the OS would need to be involved. The code sent might not actually be Cmd-F5; it could be something the OS interprets as being that.


*****


Another possibility is Speech; many programs have that available now. In Safari it's found in the Edit menu - Speech > "Start speaking". Selecting that will cause the text in the active window, or the active part of a window, to be spoken. Safari does not have a keyboard command combo to activate that; if that feature is available in Firefox (I don't have it to check), and it has a key combo set for it, then in theory that may have been activated.


The 'voice' is the same in either case; the main distinction is whether a black box with white text also appears - that's used only by VoiceOver.

What's turning VoiceOver on?

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