How can I tell if Voice Over is turned on in System Preferences?

Question

Is there an way, ideally backwards compatible to Mac OS X 10.3, to tell if "Voice Over" is activated in System Preferences?

Answer 1

This appears to be stored in a preferences file for Universal Access. The app identifier is "com.apple.universalaccess" and the key containing the flag for whether VoiceOver is on or off is "voiceOverOnOffKey". You should be able to retrieve this using the CFPreferences API, something looking like:

CFBooleanRef flag = CFPreferencesCopyAppValue(CFSTR("voiceOverOnOffKey"), CFSTR("com.apple.universalaccess"));