MOJAVE AND SPEECH

Since upgrading to Mojave on my MBP I cannot access the text to speech by using OPT + ESC keys. I use this featue extensively as a proofreading tool, to read out books and translation projects. Its a very cool tool to hear what is written back and catch errors or just to listen to a customized voice read text back. This feature was working fine for years on all my Macs.

Any ideas what's going on?

Thanks!