Solution to: MacOS VoiceOver / reader keeps popping up

I was being driven crazy by the fact that every time I restarted my Macbook, the VoiceOver prompt would show up:

… but I’d disabled VoiceOver. I keep checking this every time:

It turns out that this prompt is controlled by another accessibility setting called “Spoken Content,” even though the prompt itself is under a process called VoiceOver*:

Be sure to disable all of those, and you’re good to go. I had turned them on a couple years ago when I was checking the reading order for my online textbook and making sure it worked for a screen reader. And it turns out there’s a lot of disconnected toggles along the way!