I have found the Magic trackpad a nightmare for muting Voiceover with the slightest accidental touch. Listening to a David woodbridge podcast it seems that this is a problem other users also experience so this does not seem a problem confined to me. So I suspect that the Magic trrackpad is tripping you up here.
I have taken 2 strategies for dealing with this. 1. Hiding my Magic tracpad in a place where I cannot touch it by accident. 2. Setting up a key toggle in Voiceover utility so that I can unmute Voiceover with right option A. As I find tapping away on the magic trackpad to get Voiceover unmuted a frustrating and unpredictable experience the second solution is the one I would recommend to avoid future difficulty. You need to go to keyboard commanders in Voiceover utility and browse the available Voiceover commands. Make sure you do not select mute and unmute sounds as this is completely different from muting and unmuting voiceover. David Griffith . . -----Original Message----- From: mac-access-boun...@mac-access.net [mailto:mac-access-boun...@mac-access.net] On Behalf Of Paul Hopewell Sent: 03 September 2012 10:54 To: mac-access Subject: Recovering from VoiceOver problems Hello All, I am running Mountain Lion 10.8.1 on an iMac. This is set up with a login password. I use an external hard disk for time Machine and SuperDuper! backups. I also use a magic trackpad. Recently I have had problems with VoiceOver hanging and my not being able to restart it without sighted help. On both occasions my iMac had gone to sleep and on waking up VoiceOver would no longer talk. So I had to power off and restart. VoiceOver would then work fine for entering my password at login time, and then other system startup such as a script announcing the software level would work fine. Alas though VoiceOver remained silent. My sighted wife then told me that the system displayed information that VoiceOver was active but with speech muted. VO + PF8 would not open the VoiceOver utility and Command+PF5 would not shutdown VoiceOver. So with sighted help I opened the voiceOver utility from the applications menu and unchecked the box in the speech section titled "speech muted". Again we tried to stop and restart VoiceOver with Command+PF5 but with no joy. However a system shutdown and restart caused VoiceOver to work normally again. It is unclear how the speech muted check box became checked. It all seemed to happen while the iMac was in sleep mode. My question is how could I have recovered VoiceOver without sighted help? On a previous occasion when i had this problem and my wife was not available I recovered VoiceOver by booting from a month old SuperDuper! backup and then restoring that backup onto my iMac hard disk. that all took a long time and seemed a sledge hammer to crack a nut! Using the VoiceOver utility and the keyboard commander I have set up hotkeys to mute/unmute sound, mute/unmute speech, and mute/unmute VoiceOver. Alas these did not work when VoiceOver was hung with speech off. Also I am unclear about the difference between mute speech and mute VoiceOver and which, if either, relates to the speech muted check box in the VoiceOver utility. I would appreciate any thoughts on the above and in particular any thoughts on how to recover from a hung VoiceOver in a less drastic way than restoring a SuperDuper! backup. Many thanks. Paul Hopewell <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
