What's Up with YouTube Being Super Chatty on Page Load?

By Kevin Shaw, 21 June, 2023

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I'm using the latest version of Mac OS. When VoiceOver encounters a YouTube page in Safari, it starts speaking through all of the Verified badges on the page and reading the titles of some of the videos all at once. Pressing control doesn't stop the speech and navigating by heading is unreliable. This is new behaviour which started earlier this week.

I can reproduce this on an older system, so it seems like the issue is with YouTube itself.

Can anyone else produce this on Safari on Mac? What about on Chrome?

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Comments

By Tyler on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I can also reproduce this on Safari. I haven't tried any other browsers or platforms, as I've found the behavior occurs sporadically.

By Ekaj on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

When I was at my parents' place this past weekend, a sister was having an issue on her Intel-based MacBook Air. I asked if I could check it out too, and she let me. So I did that, and the only website that did it was YouTube. It kept saying "verify" with no apparent end in site. Mine is doing this too. I guess it's something on YouTube's end, because changing settings in VoiceOver doesn't seem to fix it.

By Brad on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

I just use firefox for now.

I'm not bothered by it but those who are forced to put up with it might want to make a call to BeMyEyes' google support.

By JC on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Same here. I'm using a third party app called Friendly Streaming browser, and I've been receiving the same result as everyone elce. the only workaround I've found is moving away and back to the focus window.

By John Lipsey on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

I have this same issue in Brave browser. My only solution is to toggle Voiceover off with command F5, wait about 10 seconds or so, then toggle it back on. It's super annoying, but works. An actual fix for this would be great, as I use YouTube every day, a lot.

By Matthew Whitaker on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Same here. I'm experiencing this.

By John Lipsey on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Does disabling this have any negative affect on my web browsing experience in general? I don't want to negatively impact anything I may do in future, just to fix youtube for now.

By LaBoheme on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

click on the help button and see what live region is and the effect of uncheck the box. the short answer is no, most sites use this for verbose messages. youtube is not the only site doing this. as thing goes, i think sooner or later one would have to uncheck this anyway, because more and more sites are doing this.

By Tyler on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

While reporting of live regions can be helpful in certain situations if well-implemented, Youtube's decision to report the "Verified" badge in this way is superfluous and poorly conceived. One thing you could do is create a VoiceOver activity (or NVDA configuration profile) that disables reporting of live regions on Youtube while leaving screenreader behavior on other websites unaffected.

By Diego Garibay on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

I started noticing this in the morning. Thank you for telling us how to fix it on windows as well.

By John Lipsey on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

I tried creating one of these. Everything, as far as I can tell, is set correctly for the activity, with YouTube.com entered as the website the activity should be used for However, live regions continue to be read by VoiceOver. Does the activity apply to all browsers or only Safari? Only Safari would be weird as there are many web browsers for MacOS, but I can't figure out what I broke.
Any help/insights would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

By Tyler on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I'm not sure about other browsers; I only use Safari and the activity seems to work for me.

By John Lipsey on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

This activity appears to only work for Safari. I may just have to globally disable live regions and hope for the best. I still kind of hope Youtube just undoes this change, as it's a recent thing.

By Tyler on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I tried reporting this via the Google Accessibility feedback form but it wouldn't go through, saying the description needed a minimum of 10 characters, I had 460. SMH

By Pa. Joe on Saturday, June 24, 2023 - 12:53

Thank you for this solution, in my frustration I turned to Apple Vis, and there was my answer.
This is why I'm a member.

By Minionslayer on Thursday, August 24, 2023 - 12:53

Sorry for replying late. I just wanted to say I have actually submitted a ticket via the Google Accessibility feedback and suggestions form and I would implore more people to do the same. This is an inexcusable issue, not necessarily because it is severe in consequences, but because of the probably-little effort required to fix this. Yet it still remains. Never mind the many (at this point) issues that plague the iOS app.

By Siobhan on Thursday, August 24, 2023 - 12:53

As I've said before, it's just as annoying on the Mac using any browser you like. i have to turn down voice over, wait and hope I can click the search filter button and it loads because sometimes yep? sometimes, nope.

By Minionslayer on Sunday, December 17, 2023 - 12:53

I too am very grateful to those who have suggested using VoiceOver Activities. That being said, since I upgraded to MacOS 14, I've found that Activities based on a specific app, context, or website only usually work. In fact, I've found a smattering of bugs related to Activities as a whole. All this to day that, even though I've got my youtube.com Activity correctly set up, I find that all of the gunk still filters through sometimes.
I guess I'm really just complaining about the stance of a11y and bug fixing here. Quite frankly I was disappointed with the release of Sonoma due to the VoiceOver bugs it bought, but I'm also disappointed with Google. I mean we've been experiencing pretty large and annoying YouTube bugs for years now, and only recently some more joined the fray? Now not eve the web version is save from poor a11y choices? This is ridiculos and simply not good enough, right?

By Brian on Sunday, December 17, 2023 - 12:53

Have you tried the Duck Duck Go browser for YouTube videos? If you can deal with a simplistic design, the DDG media player is quite nice for streaming youtube videos.

Just my 2 cents. 🤷🏼‍♂️