VoiceOver stopped speaking

By imorgan, 4 September, 2022

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Ten days after upgrading to iOS 15.6.1, VoiceOver stopped speaking. The gestures still work, and I get haptic feedback but nothing else. However, if I'm on a phone call, Voiceover works normally until the call is ended.

Also, if I ask Siri a question, I can swipe over the screen and here VoiceOver read any text that is present. But, if I try to switch to an app, VoiceOver stops speaking again.

In case it was some sort of resource issue, I've closed all apps. I've also rebooted the iPhone and, with great difficulty, managed to unlock the iPhone after the reboot. Still, the problem persists.

Unfortunately, I don't have any headphones to determine if the problem is isolated to the builtin speaker or not.

I contacted Apple about the problem, but at that time was not aware that the problem would disappear when on a call. So, Apple was not able to find anything.

Has anyone seen this problem, or are there any suggestions to solve the issue?

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Comments

By Shawn T on Saturday, September 24, 2022 - 14:50

since you have haptics, flick to something to make voiceover speak, then press the up volume button. Since volume buttons affect whatever audio is playing at the time, doing it when you're fairly sure VO is speaking may fix it. Also, if volume buttons don't work, try a three finger double tap, which toggles speech. However, I think the volume of voiceover is likely all the way down as I described earlier.

By imorgan on Saturday, September 24, 2022 - 14:50

Thanks! Ironically, I knew about the possibility of the volume issue from Michael Feir's book, but since VO was working during phone calls I dismissed that possibility. Bumping up the volume did the trick.