Login Screen Issue

By Joseph Westhouse, 19 March, 2016

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

We recently got a new iMac where I work, and I've found on a few occasions that when I try to activate Voiceover from the login screen, it doesn't turn on - instead I just get the "bomb" sound (I think it's "boundary reached", according to the sounds help, but I need to confirm that). I've successfully used VO from this computer, and have even successfully used it on the login screen. Any idea what could be causing this behavior?

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Comments

By KE7ZUM on Saturday, March 19, 2016 - 03:33

Can you try hitting fn plus command plus f5 to get vo to turn on? You might depending on your keyboard settings have to do this.

By Joseph Westhouse on Saturday, March 19, 2016 - 14:34

That was the first thing I did. I got the same result whether I hit Cmd + F5 or Fn + Cmd + F5. Sorry, I should've mentioned that in my first post.

By KE7ZUM on Saturday, March 19, 2016 - 17:50

Hmm odd. You sure you ar hitting f5? I find sometimes I need to count that. Also, the next time you have voiceover on at start up why not go to system prefs, then to user accounts, and the last item in the table will let you adjust a lot of things including use voiceover at the log on screen.

hope that helps a bit.

By Joseph Westhouse on Saturday, March 19, 2016 - 21:41

Definitely hitting F5. Like I said, I'm able to turn VO on once logged in, and I have been able to turn it on from the login screen on some occasions. So it's not an issue of not doing the activate VO command properly. I am not going to set it to use VO on the login screen because I'm not the only person who'll be using this machine and I doubt all the other users would appreciate having to deal with VO.

By david s on Sunday, March 20, 2016 - 02:42

Hello,

Is it on a network? A network with a windows based domain server?

It's odd but here is my experience with a Mac on a network. If an account or log in gets locked, VO stopped working. It didn't matter which account was selected, VO no longer spoke. I unlock the account on the domain controller and it works again. In some cases, the user was able to log in but no network activities were allowed. Migrating the Macs to an OSX server resolved most issues but by then, I was no longer managing that part of the network.