Voiceover stopped speaking

It reminds me of turning the VO volume level all the way down without realizing it. Was that option on your rotor? You might ask SIRI to turn on Voice Over just to check if it is running. Then try connecting to a Bluetooth speaker or even wired headphones.

It sounds like VO speech was muted. Try this:

1. While holding your VO keys, do the "radio dial" rotor gesture on the trackpad, magic pad, etc.
2. Double tap the Trackpad with 3 fingers, twice.
3. If this is the issue, you will hear VO say something like, "VoiceOver unmuted" or "Speech unmuted".

HTH. 😃

No matter how many times I check up there at the first post of the thread, it still says it's the iOS and iPadOS forum. I feel disoriented and woozy.
I have had this happen before, both the woozy feeling from reading an AppleVis thread, and Voice Over stopping speaking on my phone. The last time it happened, I think I did a hard restart of the phone with the holding down of volume and lock screen buttons for a long time then waiting for it to restart. I just can't remember the specifics or if it was still making VO sounds. I have most of those turned off.

First off, my mistake on thinking this was a macOS issue.
Having said that, have you tried what I suggested above, beginning with Step #2, replacing the "Trackpad" with the "Touchscreen" of your device? 😝

You might be onto something with the voice selection.

By any chance, are you using headphones, a streamer, hearing aids with Bluetooth, or any other device to amplify sounds? I have experienced this with all of the above. It's bizarre to hear the Voiceover sounds without the voice.

The other time I witnessed this, turning off the battery pack attached to the person's iPhone resolved it. I do not know why or what the connection was, but turning it off immediately brought back the voice.

Having VO sounds, but no voice is usually indicative of:

1. VoiceOver voice is muted. VO sounds will still be audible, but no voice will be heard. BO controls will also still work.
2. VoiceOver voice volume is at 0, while VO sounds volume is at a level you can still experience.

For the first option, simply doing the gesture on your screen (3 finger double tap by default) will Unmute the voice.
For the second option, I believe you will need a sighted helper to go into Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Audio, to restore default voice volume.

If neither of these options work, then I would recommend a visit to the nearest Apple store. 🤷🏻‍♂️

in about 16.2 I had this exact issue. Had to restore. Can't remember how it first happened but it was when I did an update. I think it had something to do with airplay. whatever, never worked out what was wrong. reported to apple but if they did something was never informed. Just know that once I did the restore with sighted help as it was from icloud it never came back. I do recall being worried about installing the next couple of updates in case it happened again. Now I come to think of it it wasn't airplay it was just a minor apple security update. I think if you are on iOS16 they just released 16.6.1 which was apparently a security update so it maybe the exact same thing if you just did that update. But oddly as I say updating again once restored didn't cause the issue again. So something we may never find out what was going on.

You may be on to something with Air Play. I never even thought of that, but it might be a good idea to disable that completely just for troubleshooting purposes. 😌