iPhone 11 in weird mode mom panicking

[USMousie]

Just setting up. It refused her WiFi password in case that matters. Then she put it next to her old phone to transfer data.

The screen went blank light grey. The word EMERGENCY is typed in font so large it does not fit the screen.

I can’t even turn it off. It just stays blank grey and when I press buttons the word emergency shows.

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[CharlesShaw]

What you're describing sounds like what happened to me years ago after I had read about and enabled the accessibility shortcut (triple-clicking the side button, as I recall) thinking it would be handy to have it zoom the screen. Didn't use the feature and forgot about it until I accidentally activated the zoom one day and couldn't read the screen. While trying to perform a reset of the phone, I received a call from emergency services asking me what my emergency was.