Annoying Voiceover

[jackalope]

I'm suddenly getting a voice describing everything I do or point my cursor to. For example, if I go to my Bookmarks, the voice will say "Bookmarks...second level....Library....etc."
I didn't do anything to turn this on. How do I turn it off? I can mute my audio, but then I can't get any audio that I actually want.

There are some other annoying things that also just started happening. Like boxes appearing around anything I select. And menu items repeating themselves -- the Restart, Shut Down and Log out menu items are duplicated. Did I suddenly get a virus? Is my computer about to die?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[g/re/p]

Open System Preferences and click on the Universal Access pref pane
and set VoiceOver and Zoom to off.

After that, open disk utility and repair permissions, and then reboot the computer.