[NFBCS] Lately Zoom with JAWS 2026 are to verbose when announcing buttons and controls

[Doug Lee]

This approach makes sense. I rarely use Zoom, but I saw this issue last
week and realized that the unwanted text is assigned to the UIA Help and
MSAA AccHelp properties of accessibility elements in the Zoom
accessibility trees. Glad to hear this should be fixed internally at
some point.

On Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 09:47:22AM -0700, Curtis Chong via NFBCS wrote:
   Greetings:


   I believe I have a temporary fix for your problem short of having to
   purchase scripts from Hartgen Consultancy.


   Here is a procedure which assumes you are using JAWS without the Zoom
   Pro scripts from Hartgen Consultancy.


    1. Get into the Zoom Workspace program, but do not start a meeting or
       anything like that.
    2. Press the JAWSKEY along with the number 6 to bring up the JAWS
       Settings Center. Tab once to focus on the Tree view.
    3. Arrow down in the Tree View until you reach JAWS Verbosity, which
       should be reported by JAWS as being “closed.”
    4. Press Right Arrow to open this.
    5. Arrow down once to hear what level is set for Speech Verbosity. For
       most folks, this is stated as Beginner. Mine is set to
       Intermediate, but that doesn’t really matter.
    6. Arrow down once to Configure Verbosity Levels, which JAWS will
       report as being “closed.” Press Right Arrow to open this branch of
       the tree.
    7. Assuming you are at the Beginner verbosity level, Arrow down once
       to hear “Beginner...”.
    8. Do not press Enter on this. Press the Spacebar instead. You should
       now be in a list of 24 items.
    9. Press the letter h to focus on Help Balloon, which JAWS will report
       as being checked. Press Space to uncheck this.
   10. Tab to and activate OK for as many times as you need to in order to
       exit JAWS Settings.


   This should do the trick and save you lots of aggravation during your
   Zoom meetings.


   Cordially,


   Curtis Chong



-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
"When your best-laid plans have turned to dust, vacuum!"
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