Anyone know what the keyboard shortcut is to change mouse pointer behavior to Follows VoiceOver Cursor?
In VoiceOver Utility, Navigation, you can set the behavior of the mouse pointer to Move, ignore, or follow the VoiceOver cursor. I generally leave this set to Ignore VoiceOver Cursor. But sometimes, and I don't know how, this setting flips from Ignore to Follow VoiceOver Cursor. I assume I must be hitting some keyboard shortcut by accident that triggers this change. If I knew what the shortcut was, maybe I could avoid pressing it.
Or maybe this is a bug? Maybe there is no keyboard shortcut, and it's just flipping by itself?
Any information about this would be appreciated.
Comments
Following Up with this question
Sorry Paul, I don't have an answer to your specific question. In general, I was wondering if anybody has a good explanation of the three different choices and why one would choose one option over the other two? Or in which situations would one choice be better?
Thanks
Possibly for low vision users
Per the original question, this still happens to me from time to time. If I'm using Google Docs, it really messes up menu access.
Marc, I would think anyone totally blind would set the mouse pointer to ignore VoiceOver, as users in this category don't use the mouse or mouse pointer.
Setting mouse pointer to follow VoiceOver would be useful if you're low vision and you plan to zoom in on a focused item. Your mouse pointer is already there, so just Control+Scroll Wheel and zoom in.
Likewise, setting the mouse pointer to move the VoiceOver cursor would be useful for low vision users still able to primarily use a mouse, but they would like the additional feedback of VoiceOver automatically announcing the item under the mouse pointer.
I Use Mouse Follows VO and I'm Totally Blind
For what it's worth. It sometimes causes problems, but often it's actually a boon, for example because it lets you expand menus on hover, so you can explore entire tree structures of menus on the web that would otherwise be unreachable for keyboard users. This may or may not be actually necessary; I've not really had chance to contrast this with the usual behaviour in quite a while. But it seemed to me to be a net benefit to have it on.
Desktop Slack
As a follow up, if anybody out there is using Desktop Slack with their Mac, expanding DM threads and then using down arrow caused VoiceOver to get stuck and repeat the focused text. After engaging the Slack help desk, their suggestion was to change this setting to IGNORE VoiceOver cursor. I was not sure what the default is/was and/or what changes would occur if I change this setting. The other use case I can think of is having the mouse pointer at the same position as the VoiceOver cursor might be handy for controls that do not respond to VO SPACE BAR. But there are VoiceOver shortcuts to route the mouse pointer to the VO cursor. If I come across any other set backs with VoiceOver, I will report back here.
Go to
Paul,
Open your voiceover utility, use the navigation tab, vo-right arrow to the pop up buttyon where you can set mouse tracking behavior. If you want to have the mouse automatically follow the cursor or the voiceover cursor, that's where you set it.
Joy!
Cursor Tracking
Hey Paul,
I think the hotkey you want is:
Shift + VO + F3.
This toggles cursor tracking on and off. In Keyboard Help (VO + k) the description reads tha it toggles on and off cursor tracking between VO, Keyboard, and Mouse.
its a little hit or miss, but works.
HTH. 😇
Hi Paul
The Keyboard shortcut is : Vo plus Shift plus F3 Temporarily turn the cursor tracking options selected in VoiceOver Utility on or off