VoiceOver issue with “read text under mouse after delay” feature

By Krazy Kat, 19 June, 2015

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello,

For years I have used the VoiceOver feature “read text under mouse after delay” Recently the behavior of this feature became quite erratic for me. I have tried to detail my problems below. When I am using this feature my vision is such that I am able to see the page, but not able to read the text except with VoiceOver.

In the VoiceOver Utility >Verbosity>Announcements there is a check box “Speak text under mouse after delay”. I have the delay set to 0.

I use this feature extensively to drift the mouse cursor down the page to read the text under the mouse.

A while back (perhaps Lion) this feature became very jittery. where the cursor makes sudden unpredictable jumps to different locations, other than the one I am trying to read. For instance, if I am trying to scan down a Google search page the cursor will jump back to the top of the page.
Typically if I click on a link the cursor will jump to the top of the page and not open the link. Sometimes when scanning down a page of links the cursor will jump back to an earlier link than the one I am hovering over.

I have tried turning QuickNav off and on, this does not seem to make a difference.

I have also reset the VoiceOver preferences also to no avail.

If someone could enlighten me as to what is going on I would deeply appreciate it.

Sincerely,

John

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