urgent, VoiceOver not responding

Hello.

First, try restarting your phone. To do this, assuming you have a phone without a home button:

1. Press and release the volume up button.

2. Press and release the volume down button.

3. Press and hold the side button for at least ten seconds.

This should perform a hard reboot.

Second, sound curtain is a feature that is only activated when a Braille display is connected. So even if the setting is enabled, it should not have a detrement unless you have a Braille display connected.

Third, if you can, report your urgency to accessibility@apple.com.

Thank you and I hope this helps.

Is Siri working? Try asking a question. You can also get Siri to reset the phone without using buttons. Just say Siri restart iphone and it should prompt you to confirm then reset it. Also, as daft as it sounds have made sure the volume is up? May have either turned the whole phone down or VO down to 0%.

Did you accidentally turn the speech off? Try a three finger double tap to turn it back on again.

If you have a PC, connect the iPhone to iTunes and do restart if you are not able with the suggestion above. Not sure with the MAC how someone would do it. LLC.

Following up with Lee's recommendation, if you can access Siri, ask her to turn media volume to 80% or higher. Media volume, ironically, also controls VoiceOver volume. So if somehow you accidentally turned VoiceOver volume to zero, turning up media volume will correct this.
Just say, "Hey Siri, increase media volume to 80%", just for example.

HTH.

This has happened to me before. What usually happens is I would use the audio graph and the phone would completely freeze up. VoiceOver just gets stuck on the screen, and since I have a device that has an always-on display, it even shows through the always-on display, which is crazy.

Here is how to fix this: First, press the volume up button, then press the volume down button, and then hold the power button. For some reason, when your phone gets frozen in this state, after you push the volume up, then the volume down button, and hold down the power button, you'll hear the sound that Siri makes when it's listening.

Now, don't hold both volume buttons and the power button at the same time; this will call 911 or whatever the emergency service is in your country. You press the volume up button, then release it, then you quickly press the volume down button, then release it, and then hold down the power button for about 10 to 20 seconds.

If you have the power on and off sounds turned on, your phone should vibrate and make a sound to indicate that it's going off. From there, release the button. The phone should turn on normally, and VoiceOver should be on. If it's not, just triple-click the power button, and VoiceOver should come on, and you should be able to enter your passcode.

I would also recommend reporting this to Apple Accessibility by emailing accessibility@apple.com.

I can 100% confirm this. As expected by some this is worse on macos where I've filed several feedbacks.

I've had this same issue with audio graphs before, too. It was really scary, but restarting my phone with the help of Siri fixed it. I'm hoping that bug can be fixed soon.

I too have had this problem. In my case, this was iOS 26 on an iPad. I was playing the battery graph and accidentally tapped somewhere on the screen and VO totally froze up. I did a reboot and all was well. Still, they need to fix this. If you need to interrupt the graph for some reason, that's a showstopper.