Voice Over turned on Password not working

My wife used our spare iPhone 5 yesterday and accidently turned on the Voice Over function. I know how to navigate this to turn it off, however something happened that the phone is not accepting the screen lock password. I get to the last digit of the 4-digit password and the phone says it's wrong and then locks me out. I've tried turning the phone off and on to see if I can put it in recovery mode, but when I restart the phone it goes directly to the password login page and starts the whole loop again. Can anyone offer suggestions on a solution?