Voiceover won't turn off

Question

Level 1

12 points

Voiceover won't turn off

Occasionally I must inadvertently press something on my keyboard and voiceover starts reading every single item in a folder window containing literally thousands of small files.

Google suggests command+F5 or disabling Voiceover in the Accessibility preferences.
Neither of these work for me. The voice just carries on reading and reading and reading.
The only thing that works is restarting my iMac.

Please, can anyone help?
(I'm using an iMac and running 10.11.6 El Capitan if that's any help)

Posted on Jan 28, 2017 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

i_rina

Community Specialist

Jan 29, 2017 8:57 AM in response to tonybird27

Hello ,

Thanks for that info and choosing the Apple Support Communities. If I understand correctly, you are unable to turn off VoiceOver with the keyboard commands for VoiceOver or from System Preferences > Accessibility > Voice Over and making sure Enable Voice Over is not checked. You can figure out if this unexpected behavior is related to a user file or setting by trying to reproduce the issue from another user account. This process includes creating a new user account, logging in to it, and testing for the issue.

OS X El Capitan: VoiceOver pane of Accessibility preferences
How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

If you're not having the same issues in a new user and this is narrowed down to your user account, use safe mode to start up your Mac so that it performs certain checks, delete system cache files, verifies your startup disk, and attempts to repair directory issues if needed. Log into your user account and make sure Enable Voice Over in System Preferences > Accessibility > Voice Over is not checked while in safe mode and then restart normally and test the issue again.

Try safe mode if your Mac doesn't finish starting up
Limited graphics performance in OS X recovery or safe mode

Cheers!

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Answer 2

tonybird27 Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 7, 2017 1:09 PM in response to i_rina

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, "Enable Voiceover" is not checked in preferences, but it still sometimes decides to read out loud longs lists of files in the front open window.
And once it starts it's impossible to stop.

Unfortunately I'm not sure what causes this so replicating it would be difficult but I might attempt to start up in safe mode and see if that helps.

Thanks again - Tony

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Answer 3

tonybird27 Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 24, 2017 3:25 AM in response to tonybird27

Finally worked out that <cmd> <space>is what sets it off.
Still no idea how to turn it off though

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