Siri will not speak after installing 16.1 on my iPad

Hey there wildernesshike,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. We're happy to provide some assistance.

This may seem like a simple step, but have you restarted your device? Restarting your device can resolve unexpected issues. Take a look here on how to restart your iPhone: Restart your iPhone - Apple Support

Will Siri speak the screen if you enable Speak Screen in Settings  > Accessibility > Spoken Content as outlined here? Hear iPhone speak the screen, selected text, and typing feedback - Apple Support

This might help iso slate the problem.

Keep us posted.

Have a great day!

My visually impaired wife's iPhone has recently started this behavior.

I've tried turning off speak content, powering the phone off and on, and turning speak content back on.

Swiping 2 fingers from the top of the screen works to start speak screen, but saying "speak screen," generates a message (shown on the screen and not spoken - which is not at all helpful for the visually impaired), "Sorry, there's nothing to read here."

I have the same problem. Siri speak screen returns "Sorry there is nothing to read here" I've tried all the fixes. Nothing works. Apple broke this with IOS 16 and it boggles my mind that we pay 1k + for a flagship device that can't detect words on a screen that all it's predecessors could do on older versions of IOS. This is unacceptable from a company like Apple. Fix this already. Do apple dev's even use their own phones or do they use Android phones because they know their own product sucks. I've been an iphone person since iphone 3g and my Pixel work phone has really made me question sticking with apple.

Thank you for the ideas @wildernesshike, I appreciate your sharing what’s working for you. Unfortunately, your fix didn’t work for me 🙇‍♀️

I did however, find an alternate temp fix.

On the page I wanted read to me, I held my finger on one word to bring up the black menu, I chose select all option to select all the data on the page. Once the page was highlighted, I tapped the screen a second time, bringing up the same menu, & this time I arrowed to the right twice. You will see an option for ‘speak’ in the second or third swipe. once you select this, Siri comes back to life ☺️

I’ve tried it twice & so far Siri has read what I requested of her. & seems to be back to her old self, at least in that regard. .

Also, if you don’t want the entire page read, skip the select all button & manually highlight just the portions you want to hear, then choose the speak option.

hope this helps - happy multitasking!!! 🙏🤗

BP

All the best!

Best solution I found

Go to Settings

Choose Accessibility

Choose Touch

Scroll to the Bottom and select Back Tap

Set up Back Tap to read your screen by tapping the back of your iPhone twice to three times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ZeFJ65iXc

Thanks for trying those steps wildernesshike,

What we'd recommend then is to contact Apple Support so that they can look into this directly with you.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities!

This is still broken on iOS 16.2.

Has anybody contacted Apple Support regarding this?

Thank you for the suggestion but that didn't work. I have been having this problem ever since I upgraded to 16.1 and cannot find a solution so far