This is a brilliant way of coping with what is a very frustrating situation.
Many thanks for your effort. I've save your message for later if I ever have
this problem again.
Cheers
Simon Cavendish
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 8:05 PM
Subject: Command-F5/Restarting Computer does not turn VO on
Hello!
I know this problem has already been resolved for Simon, but this info
might help others experiencing the problem of VO not talking... It did
not dawn on me to provide this info previously until I heard Simon's
solution was, with sighted assistance, to physically turn on VO using the
mouse.
Ever since I installed Mac OS X 10.4.11, this problem has been cropping
up for me. I will be working in Safari, Mail or Vienna and the Mac
becomes "busy." After clearing the application's "busy" state in one of
the many ways described in this forum, Voice Over occasionally stops
speaking and cannot be turned back on again with Command-F5 (generates
the "invalid" beep) -- or even restarting the computer.
With sighted assistance, I discovered that:
- the "Command-F5 check box in "KeyboArd Shortcuts" was, indeed, checked
(even tried unchecking and rechecking this box to see if it had any
affect),
- the Voice Over "Off" radio button was selected in the Universal
Access/Seeing Pane of System Preferences.
Because the computer was not accepting the Command-F5 keyboard command,
the only way to turn VO back on was to use the mouse to click the VO "On"
button.
This happened several times while I had no sighted assistance around --
*** VERY FRUSTRATING! *** I figured there must be a way to turn VO back
on again without sighted assistance. Here is what I did:
1. Press Control-F2 to move the mouse to the Menu Bar.
2. Press the Down Arrow to open the Apple Menu.
3. Quickly type "sy" to jump to System Preferences.
4. Press Return to open System Preferences.
5. Press Control-F2 to return to the Menu Bar.
6. Press "v" to jump to the "View" menu.
7. Press Down Arrow to open the View Menu.
8. Press "u" to jump to "Universal Access."
9. Press Return to open the Universal Access Pane of System Preferences.
10. Press Tab twice to select the Voice Over On/Off controls.
12. Press Left Arrow to select the Voice Over "On" radio button.
At this point, Voice Over starts talking again and (miraculously)
Command-F5 starts working again.
Notes:
- I am running Tiger 10.4.11, so I do not know if these steps will be the
same under Leopard.
- In step 11, the first time you press the Tab key takes you to the "tab
bar" where the various tabs for Universal Access sections are located. I
have the "Seeing" Tab already selected, so I do not have to mess with it.
If the "Seeing" tab is not selected for you, you will have to move to a
different Tab with the Left and/or Right Arrows -- but, because there is
no feedback, I think this may have the potential of causing some
problems... I suggest setting the tab to "Seeing" while you have VO
working as a precaution. This way, you, too, could just press the TAB key
twice like I did and not worry about it.
- Maybe, one of you Apple Script/Automater geniuses might be able to
create an app that could, in emergencies, do this for us automatically.
Hope this helps someone...
Lou.
=== Original Messages ===
Dear Simon,
Delighted to hear that you are connected and that Voiceover is up and
running. Thank you for providing us with the details of what happened.
<snip>
Dear Esther and All,
I have finally got my Voceover back!!! I'm delighted, relieved and very
very
excited at the quality of the default voice in Leopard. A sighted friend
of
mine came over a couple of hours ago, and using the mouse, activated
Voceover in the system preferences. It works!
<snip>
