Why are websites trying to talk at me?
2 pointsby LeratoAustini4 hours ago3 comments
  • supernes3 hours ago
    I examined that Dell link and speech synthesis is used in the "Virtual Assistant" on-page chat widget. There's a feature check to see if it's available so it shouldn't trigger the way it does for you, that may be a browser issue.
  • serf4 hours ago
    a lot of that may be TTS accessibility features.

    I know Ubuntu, among others, used to ship Firefox without modules it defaulted into, so it would complain harmlessly and bring up an annoying pop-up-blocked style modal when the TTS module/engine was missing.

    (they may still do this, but i'm not up to date.)

    • LeratoAustini3 hours ago
      Oh so maybe they are just initialising the TTS by default, ready for those who need it for accessibility? That would make sense.

      I'm on a Debian, so that ties in with what you mentioned.

      It's easy to get rid of the error, I was more just curious. Thought maybe mainstream websites had started blasting speech at users as soon as they arrived.

  • fuzzfactor4 hours ago
    Maybe nobody else was listening?