Why is 'speech-dispatcher' listed so many times in sound settings and what is it?

Question

Yesterday the list looked like this:

Today the list looks like this:

So what is this speech-dispatcher that I have never seen before? And why so many of them?

Information Update:

I went into Universal Access, and it was off, I tried turning it on and then off again in there, but it makes no difference, the entries in the sound application list are still there.

When running the command ps xa | grep -P 'speech-dispatcher.*\.conf' the output is:

17906 tty2     Sl+    0:09 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_espeak /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/espeak.conf
17911 tty2     Sl+    0:01 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_cicero /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/cicero.conf
17915 tty2     Sl+    0:01 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_generic /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/generic.conf
17918 tty2     Sl+    0:01 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_dummy /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/dummy.conf
24407 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep --color=auto -P speech-dispatcher.*\.conf

OS Information:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 15.04
Release:    15.04
Codename:   vivid
Flavour: GNOME
GNOME Version: 3.16

Solution 1

You have enabled the ScreenReader in GNOME, that's all. To disable the Screen Reader start Universal Access and click Screen Reader.

---

You can see four entries in Sound, because there are four processes

% ps xa | grep -P 'speech-dispatcher.*\.conf'
14520 tty2     Sl+    0:00 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_generic /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/generic.conf
14523 tty2     Sl+    0:00 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_cicero /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/cicero.conf
14527 tty2     Sl+    0:03 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_espeak /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/espeak.conf
14532 tty2     Sl+    0:00 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_dummy /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/dummy.conf

Sometimes the processes, however, seem to be not properly terminated after the Screen Reader was terminated. Therefore:

killall speech-dispatcher

As said here, it is a known upstream bug which is currently being worked on.

Solution 2

In my setup, most of the GNOME stuff is not used and in the gnome-control-center there were a lot of speech-dispatcher processes as well. I hadn't the Screen Reader enabled.

But still, the processes were there. I had to disable the service using systemd tools:

sudo systemctl disable speech-dispatcher  # disables systemd service

And kill the remaining processes after that like in the accepted solution:

killall speech-dispatcher

Comments

[Vicky]

I went into Universal Access, and it was off, I tried turning it on and then off again in there, but it makes no difference, the entries in the sound application list are still there.

[Byte Commander]

@ParanoidPanda As you're a 6.8k user, you might not know yet that it's no good practice to drop command outputs or to generally provide additional information in comments. Please edit your question and include it there, using the code format button! ;-D

[Vicky]

@ByteCommander: Oh... Sorry! :D I've updated my question now with that formatted information.

[A.B.]

@ByteCommander He, the edit link edits my answer ;)

[Byte Commander]

Oh, right. I forgot that [edit] obviously links to the current post's edit page, not the current question's one. Probably because I only or at least mainly use it with questions... I apologize! ;)

[Panagiss]

Every day i have to kill it all once! And the other day the same. It needs to be addressed.