The day iPhone turned its VoiceOver option on.

I had a hell of a time this morning after iPhone — on its own somehow — started behaving as if I'd turned on what I eventually figured out was a function designed to help the visually impaired. Suddenly, it spoke aloud everything that appeared on the screen, including the demand that I enter my security code.

But it wouldn't receive my security code in the normal way — apparently because the method of entering numbers is different once you activate the VoiceOver feature. You can interact with Siri without entering the code, but Siri would not respond to multiple different efforts at telling it to turn off VoiceOver. I'd used my laptop to search and figure out that the thing that was driving me nuts was called VoiceOver. I had many interactions with Siri like:

I do not want to hear VoiceOver.

If you don't want it, don't want it.

I worried that some extravagant virus had taken over iPhone, coopting Siri and who know what else. Why didn't Siri understand references to a feature within the iPhone software? Siri was acting insolent and obtuse, taunting me!

Eventually, using the laptop, I found instructions about how to use iTunes on the laptop screen to turn off VoiceOver in the iPhone. But, man, that was nuts.

What if I had been out with my iPhone without my laptop? What would I have done? And VoiceOver was making noise, including saying the numerals of my security code out loud. This would have been crazy in a public place!