As a long-time VoiceOver user, I prefer to set VoiceOver verbosity to Low (VO Utility, > Verbosity, > Speech Tab, Default Speech Verbosity). The only problem is that, by default, VoiceOver doesn't announce the status of radio buttons when verbosity is set to Low.
Recently, I discovered how to fix this. Right after the setting for Default Speech Verbosity, open the Additional Speech Verbosity Options. Navigate to the Custom Verbosity table. In the first column of the table, arrow down to Radio Button. VO+Right to the second column and change the pulldown menu from Default to Medium.
After you do this, VoiceOver uses Medium verbosity for radio buttons, which announces their selection state.
Whew.