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On a Mac (Catalina) the "Hover Text" accessibility option does not work in webpages, is there a way to enable this

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  • Last reply by Chris

Chris
Chris
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On a Mac book Pro running the latest OS (Catalina) I have gone into System Preferences>>Accessibility>>Zoom and checked the "Enable Hover Text" option. This allows a hotkey to be held down and the text under the mouse cursor displayes at a much larger size. This is working great in Chrome and Safari but in FireFox webpages won't "zoom" in on text. This functionality works fine on FireFox itself (Menus, bookmark bar, tab bars etc) but moving to the webpages displayed nothing happens. I know its not the pages themselves as I've opened the exact pages in all three browsers and this feature works in Chrome and Safari but it doesn't on FF.

Is there some way to enable this feature for FF? I really want to use FF for the priviacy but I have some difficulty with my vision at times and really need this to work. I know that I can increase the font size of the entire window and I've done that but this functionality is what I really need. In the attachments you can see in FF it works on the bookmark "most visited" and in Safari the text boxed in red is part of the page, I was trying to do that on the first attachemnt in FF but you can see there is no text magnification on the page itself.

Any help greatly appreciated!!

On a Mac book Pro running the latest OS (Catalina) I have gone into System Preferences>>Accessibility>>Zoom and checked the "Enable Hover Text" option. This allows a hotkey to be held down and the text under the mouse cursor displayes at a much larger size. This is working great in Chrome and Safari but in FireFox webpages won't "zoom" in on text. This functionality works fine on FireFox itself (Menus, bookmark bar, tab bars etc) but moving to the webpages displayed nothing happens. I know its not the pages themselves as I've opened the exact pages in all three browsers and this feature works in Chrome and Safari but it doesn't on FF. Is there some way to enable this feature for FF? I really want to use FF for the priviacy but I have some difficulty with my vision at times and really need this to work. I know that I can increase the font size of the entire window and I've done that but this functionality is what I really need. In the attachments you can see in FF it works on the bookmark "most visited" and in Safari the text boxed in red is part of the page, I was trying to do that on the first attachemnt in FF but you can see there is no text magnification on the page itself. Any help greatly appreciated!!
Attached screenshots

All Replies (4)

Senali Madawala
Senali Madawala
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macOS Catalina has its share of fixes, but it also has some new problems, as do all software releases.


Accessibility Bugs Resolved in macOS Catalina

Our testing indicates that Apple has resolved the below bugs in macOS Catalina. Let us know if we missed any; we always love adding more fixes to these articles. 

   -The "New Event" dialog in Calendar is more navigable with buttons appearing more consistently. Also, pressing the Tab key to cycle between events behaves more reliably.
   -VoiceOver is now more responsive when using Activities with Nuance voices.
   -VoiceOver no longer seems to skip over entire blocks of text when using the, "Read all" command. Typically, this would happen when reading webpage articles in Safari.
   -When pressing Command Shift D to send a message in Mail, VoiceOver now correctly speaks the action as, "Send."
   -When going back a page in Safari, VoiceOver more consistently returns to the same point.
   -When navigating a webpage in Safari Reader, there is no longer a vertical scrollbar, and if you have curser wrapping disabled, pressing VO Left Arrow will, as expected, not wrap around to the bottom of the page.
   -VoiceOver no longer announces, "System Preferences has new window" when navigating certain preference panes.
   -VoiceOver should no longer occasionally behave as though it were disabled when interacting with the Touch Bar on certain Macs
   -the address bar in Safari should behave better, with VoiceOver no longer announcing incorrect characters when you delete text.
Chris
Chris Question owner
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Thanks for that information. I don't believe this to be an issue with Catalina, but with Firefox since "hover text" works fine in other browsers and in the non-webpage portion of Firefox, it just doesn't work in the webpage itself (and only in Firefox so its not the site but the browser). Its like there is something not being rendered properly in the Document Object Model or something for the OS to latch onto. But that's just a guess.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Hi Chris, Catalina seems to be really new. I don't even see a reference to "Hover Text" when I search in the bug tracking system, so if Firefox needs to be modified to set MacOS "see" the web content, someone will need to initiate that.

But first, is your Firefox set to allow "Accessibility" features? You can double-check here:

  • Mac: "3-bar" menu button (or Firefox menu) > Preferences
  • Windows: "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options
  • Linux: "3-bar" menu button (or Edit menu) > Preferences
  • Any system: type or paste about:preferences into the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it

In the search box at the top of the page, type access and Firefox should filter to the relevant privacy settings section.

If you have a checkmark next to "Prevent accessibility services from accessing your browser", try clearing that -- Firefox will need to restart - and test whether Hover Text works with Firefox's existing Accessibility interface.

If it still doesn't work, could you file a bug? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

Chris
Chris Question owner
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thanks for the feedback....yes Accessibility services are enabled in Firefox preferences.