I've encountered this situation a number of times. With sighted
assistance I learned that the problem is when you use VO+SHIFT+COMMAND
and then left-arrow, the VoiceOver options menu is overlaid with another
window, thus causing VO to loose focus. Once this happens, it seems
there is no way to get VO to speak again. I don't remember what is in
the new window, but my solution to get around this was to press and hold
the power button on the Mac Mini M1 until it shuts off, wait a few
seconds then power it back on.
I encountered this situation because the VO volume at start up on my
system is too low and I tried to increase it using the VO+SHIFT +COMMAND
keys, which brings up the VO options menu focused on rate. Holding that
combination then pressing the left-arrow key causes this mess.
Once my frustration level with this situation got to me, I contacted
Apple Accessibility. They were able to observe this behavior, but were
unable to provide a solution. However, they did suggest a work-around,
which was to connect an external speaker to the head phone jack and use
the volume control on that to get around this problem. So I did, and no
more worries!
On 9/15/2025 2:56 PM, Steve Matzura wrote:
Don't try this at home unless you're very brave!
I got my machine to go into Recovery Mode with VoiceOver. I went
through the whole re-installation dialog, and decided I wanted to
speed things up a little in the VoiceOver department. To do this, I
held down Shift+VO+Command and use the Right Arrow key to navigate the
VoiceOver adjustment menu to the Rate portion. I then used the VO+Up
Arrow to adjust it a couple clicks faster. Then I decided I wanted to
find out what was next on that menu, so I pressed
Shift+VO+Command+Right Arrow again, and everything came to a grinding
halt. No Voiceover, no nothing. Of course, I don't have the TV hooked
up yet, and there's no one here to help me with it, so I just started
over and decided I wouldn't press that key combination again! LOL.
But my curiosity got the better of me, and yes, I did try it again,
and yes, it did fail again in exactly the same way.
I don't know that this is a problem when MacOS is actually up and
running, but in the Recovery Mode screen, it definitely is.
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