Fix for MacOS voiceover automatically moving through elements on a webpage?

Question

I'm not sure if this is a setting I have mistakenly enabled, a new bug (as this was not the experience only a month ago), or a system change and by design.

When I enable voiceover (⌘ + power key quickly 3 times) on MacOS 12.3.1 (Monterey) and refresh my browsers, the voiceover will advance through elements on its own and only stop once I engage with the tab key. This is happening on both Chrome and Firefox but not the same experience for all software (e.g., Slack & Finder do not behave this way). Is there a way to turn this feature off if it isn't a bug and in fact as intended?

Video example: https://vimeo.com/723437964

Answer 1

I found this answer on https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/voiceover-reading-the-page-non-stop/74928 :

I think this is related to a VoiceOver preference and not the browser – if you open VoiceOver Utility and navigate to Web > General, there’s a checkbox for “Automatically speak the webpage”. If you uncheck that, VO should respect that preference.

That fixed the problem for me in Firefox (after restarting Firefox).

Answer 2

After talking with MacOS support, it appears this is in fact a bug; stemmed from a recent update from a yet to be determined party (although I would guess the source is Apple as it is occurring in multiple third party browsers). It has been forwarded along to the appropriate Apple engineering team. Whether they fix the issue or punt responsibility over to Google and Mozilla is yet to be determined.