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>
