Voice options unavailable with MacOS 12.3 + safari

[Nancy-Salpepi]

Seen when testing phetsims/qa#791 and also in published GFLB and John Travoltage: There are no voice options in the combobox (but Voicing works).

[jessegreenberg]

I have macOS 11.6.2 and I am not able to produce this. I have voices Alex, Fred, Samantha, and Victoria.

@Nancy-Salpepi on the Mac where you found this can you please

1. Go to System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Spoken Content
2. Go to the "System Voice" pop-up menu and show which voices you have available? Mine looks like this

[Nancy-Salpepi]

yeah I have a lot of voices listed there. Is there some other step I should take (maybe something changed when my computer updated to macOS 12.3?)

[jessegreenberg]

@Nancy-Salpepi can you please trying going to "Customize..." Then find "Samantha" in the list and uncheck it. Then press "OK" to uninstall it. Then go back and re-check Samantha to download it again? Unsure if it will do anything but I think it is worth a try.

[Nancy-Salpepi]

Sorry @jessegreenberg, but no change. I even restarted my computer to make sure. Anything else you want me to try?

[zepumph]

@jessegreenberg could you give a status update on this. @emily-phet, is this blocking frictions release?

[jessegreenberg]

Its possible our filter for voices is removing too much. Also possible the browser just doesn't have any available voices to choose from. I was not able to reproduce on my Mac with #75 (comment). We will need to work with QA to debug what is happening on that platform.

[emily-phet]

@zepumph I think it would be good to do the investigation of what @jessegreenberg describes above, to determine what is the likely root of the issue, and from there decide if we want to proceed. So "blocking' for now, until we triage based on further investigation.

[zepumph]

Sounds good thanks.

[zepumph]

@chrisklus and I were unable to reproduce this on his safari version 15.6 (MacOS 12.6) and also when he was on MacOS 12.2. We were though able to reproduce #74. I'll have to look into that further.

[zepumph]

Up next, I'd like to work with @Nancy-Salpepi because she has been the only one to reproduce it thus far.

[Nancy-Salpepi]

@zepumph with macOS 12.6 and safari 16.0 voice options are now present in the combo box for published GFLB and JT, Friction 1.6.0-dev.24 and ratio and proportion 1.2.0-dev.31.

[zepumph]

Great news! Given how hard it has been for @jessegreenberg, @chrisklus and I to reproduce, I feel good about closing this.