Just found out that Lenovo laptops have a very interesting accessibility feature.
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Just found out that Lenovo laptops have a very interesting accessibility feature. If Narrator is enabled, pressing FN+one of the function keys will actually announce what happened, i.e. Microphone muted, microphone unmuted, using your default SAPI 5 voice. The state of the FN lock feature will be announced as well. A real shame pretty much nobody will know this, since we don't actually use Narrator, and with NVDA or Jaws, the feature isn't triggered.
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Just found out that Lenovo laptops have a very interesting accessibility feature. If Narrator is enabled, pressing FN+one of the function keys will actually announce what happened, i.e. Microphone muted, microphone unmuted, using your default SAPI 5 voice. The state of the FN lock feature will be announced as well. A real shame pretty much nobody will know this, since we don't actually use Narrator, and with NVDA or Jaws, the feature isn't triggered.
@NikJov Huh. Wonder what they're checking for, like whether it's a case of looking whether narrator.exe is running or something else. The next logical steps would be either figuring out what process is doing this and how, then making an app to spoof it, or contacting Lenovo to have them check for other screen readers.
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@NikJov Huh. Wonder what they're checking for, like whether it's a case of looking whether narrator.exe is running or something else. The next logical steps would be either figuring out what process is doing this and how, then making an app to spoof it, or contacting Lenovo to have them check for other screen readers.
@pitermach Awesome ideas. I took the much less optimistic one of trying to contact them and tell them about it, which is leading me through the rabbit holes of AI chat bots, irrelevant departments about servicing my laptops or the community forum.
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@NikJov Huh. Wonder what they're checking for, like whether it's a case of looking whether narrator.exe is running or something else. The next logical steps would be either figuring out what process is doing this and how, then making an app to spoof it, or contacting Lenovo to have them check for other screen readers.
@pitermach The process that does this is "FnHotkeyUtility.exe". And, yep, it seems to be a simple narrator.exe check. I renamed a random application to narrator.exe, and that was enough to convince it Narrator is running, so not all that hard.
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@pitermach The process that does this is "FnHotkeyUtility.exe". And, yep, it seems to be a simple narrator.exe check. I renamed a random application to narrator.exe, and that was enough to convince it Narrator is running, so not all that hard.
@NikJov Well there's a cool life hack for Lenovo laptop owners then
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@pitermach The process that does this is "FnHotkeyUtility.exe". And, yep, it seems to be a simple narrator.exe check. I renamed a random application to narrator.exe, and that was enough to convince it Narrator is running, so not all that hard.
@NikJov @pitermach I wonder if there's a way to somehow make an NVDA addon that can somehow do this without us having to rename an exe to narrator.
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@NikJov @pitermach I wonder if there's a way to somehow make an NVDA addon that can somehow do this without us having to rename an exe to narrator.
@alexchapman @NikJov All the addon would need to do is ship a tiny .exe file called narrator.exe which would just do nothing when running, except maybe checking if nvda is running so that the process won't hang out if NVDA is quit. That's probably how I'd do it, there might be a better way but I don't have a lenovo computer so yeah.
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Just found out that Lenovo laptops have a very interesting accessibility feature. If Narrator is enabled, pressing FN+one of the function keys will actually announce what happened, i.e. Microphone muted, microphone unmuted, using your default SAPI 5 voice. The state of the FN lock feature will be announced as well. A real shame pretty much nobody will know this, since we don't actually use Narrator, and with NVDA or Jaws, the feature isn't triggered.
Apparently its not yet in NVDA core, because every OEM announces those hotkeys differently.
Feature request: mute microphone command · Issue #16056 · nvaccess/nvda
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I would like to be able to mute microphone easily during online calls in Skype, Teams, Zoom and browser-based VC apps. Describe the solution you'd like NVDA keystroke that mu...
GitHub (github.com)
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Just found out that Lenovo laptops have a very interesting accessibility feature. If Narrator is enabled, pressing FN+one of the function keys will actually announce what happened, i.e. Microphone muted, microphone unmuted, using your default SAPI 5 voice. The state of the FN lock feature will be announced as well. A real shame pretty much nobody will know this, since we don't actually use Narrator, and with NVDA or Jaws, the feature isn't triggered.
@NikJov My Lenovo has a switch on the right side for turning on and off the camera. When you flick the switch with Narrator enabled, it says camera function enabled/disabled. NVDA doesn't do this.
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@NikJov My Lenovo has a switch on the right side for turning on and off the camera. When you flick the switch with Narrator enabled, it says camera function enabled/disabled. NVDA doesn't do this.
@cubic That's exactly what I was talking about, though good to know it covers those switches as well and not just the FN key hotkeys. If you spawn a narrator.exe process you'll have that feature with any screen reader running.
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