What is command line command to disable “text to speech” on 30 macs via Remote Admin?

Question

This question is posed as a means to deal with disruptive school kids using "text to speech" facility, hence the need for such command disabling it

Also can such command be made permanent?

Answer 1

Kind of a brute force method, but you can rename the /System/Library/Speech folder or delete it altogether. You might also want to delete or rename the /usr/bin/say binary as they are likely to discover it as well. I've tested this on 10.6, and it is "permanent" in the sense that it will survive reboot.

You could send:

sudo mv /System/Library/Speech /System/Library/Speech.disable

and

sudo chmod -x /usr/bin/say to disable execution on the binary.