Notifications on Mac Big Sur

For me, banner notifications don't change VoiceOver focus. For alert notifications, I found that I can dismiss them from the Actions menu, accessed by pressing VO-Command-Space.

HTH

Notifications I've received from Twitter and Messages have changed VoiceOver focus and inhibited scrolling. As Tyler said, you can dismiss these types of notifications by pressing VO Command Space and selecting "Dismiss" from the action menu. You can also manipulate the notification in other ways from that menu, or activate it by pressing VO Space as soon as it appears. Hope this helps.

I'm getting too old to cope with having to retrain years worth of muscle memory.

But, as Apple are unlikely to return the old ways of accessing and clearing notifications, I guess I have no option other than to try and remember the Actions menu.

I don't personally feel that this is anywhere near to as discoverable for new users though.

Probably the most annoying part of the changes to notification center in the new version of macOS is a lack of a button to clear all notifications at once. In prior versions of macOS, this did exist. Please, please, bring back my clear button!

Is it possible to turn it off completely?

Hi. Same here... what's worse is when you get a phone call or FaceTime call and it gets stuck and won't move through the buttons. Then once you find the button you wanna click on it gets stuck again.

Thanks so much for this Post, i know how to dismiss them, but how can i interact with each one of them?
I love the old Notification style, but it is out of our hands.

You can also press VO+Command+F5 to bring the mouse pointer to the notification with VoiceOver focus. When you do that, a close button magically appears. Navigate to it and select it. It's anyone's guess why they made this control mouse-dependent.