VoiceAttack doesn't, by default, talk back to you, at least mine doesn't, and never has. If I want an audio confirmation that a command has been run, I need to select that option (Other > Sounds > Say something with text - to - speech) and then type in what I want it to say.
Have you installed any other programmes such as EDDI or perhaps a voicepack?
You don't need voice packs. Just voice attack. I agree, the advice you get when googling is very misleading as to which various products a particular person might need...
Yes, you will need to program it yourself (unless you can download somebody else's profile and find that it suits you - for myself, I started from scratch, and it was a good choicer, and have widened my own portfolio of commands over the several weeks that I've been running VA.
Once you have some basic VA commands laid out - Maybe "Landing Gear" presses your keybind to TOGGLE landing gear. You might want to make your commands more sophisticated (for example - Separate Landing gear up and down commands. VA can do this but not alone. As described above EDDI will present variables that VA can use. I use extremely limited voice response to highlight wen a command cannot be complied with (for example, I say "Gear UP" when gear is already up, it tells me "Landing gear already retracted". That macro gets the gear up status form EDDI, and only toggles landing gear if the change is needed. Other times, I might use a confirmatory bleep for macros that might otherwise work for fail silently ("Fire group 2" for example). VA is also great for emergency reconfigurations- for exampe, I use "Red Alert" to select combat mode (if not already selected), deploy hardpoints (if retracted), and select fire group 1.
As mentioned above disable the voice responder in EDDI - that thing does my head in!!!! - I have temporarily enabled it with selected only reports whilst exploring, but when I get back to the bubble (tonight or tomorrow), I'll be turning it off again.... One other waring about EDDI - not all status variables update instantly - so be careful about doing somthing in a script, and expecting EDDI to rerport the change later in the same script....
Another VA trick I use is where keybinds are available for multiple states of something, but your controller uses a toggle bind, use left ctrl/right ctrl/left shift/right shift of the same key to select various states of that item....
Finally for now, target the VA commands at the Elute Dangerous client window (not the Avtive Window) this can be done for the entire profile by using the options button at the top of the VA commands list.