Basic VoiceOver skills for low vision uses

This page is intended for people with sufficient vision to identify items on the iPhone or iPad screen who may find occasional use of VoiceOver helpful. If that's not the case for you please read my introduction to VoiceOver for severely sight impaired users. 

Even though you have enough sight to view and read your iPhone or iPad screen you may occasionally prefer to have text spoken to you and maybe have buttons with mystifying pictures on them described to you. You only need to learn a small set of VoiceOver gestures to get by with a combination of your sight and VoiceOver. Here's how.

You can dip in and out of using VoiceOver using Siri. Instruct Siri to turn VoiceOver on or off. Follow this by saying goodbye to Siri to clear it off your screen.

With VoiceOver turned on here are some things that are really easy to do.

Apart from taps on specific items which you can see clearly with your vision, VoiceOver gestures can be performed anywhere on the screen. Near the middle is best to ensure that all of the gesture is on the active part of the screen. Gestures described as swipes are flicks in a specific direction with one or more fingers. It's best just to brush the screen as if you were flicking dust off a jacket but if you find other ways to perform swipes that work well for you that's fine. Double tap gestures need to be performed quite rapidly to ensure that VoiceOver doesn't interpret them as two singel taps.

To answer an incoming phone call, double tap anywhere on the screen with two fingers. The same gesture will hang up if the caller at the other end doesn't beat you to it. Be aware that if no phone call is in progress, this two finger double tap will resume and pause any music or other media you were listening to. If something starts playing after your two finger double tap just double tap again with two fingers to pause the media.

To perform the equivalent of tapping an item on screen using VoiceOver requires two steps. First you need to locate and tap the item and hear its name spoken. The item will also be highlighted visually. When an item's name is spoken, VoiceOver is said to be focused on that item and you can often act on it in several different ways. For now we will look at just one way of interacting with an item. If the item is an app or a button, you can perform the equivalent of tapping the button with a single finger double tap anywhere on the screen.

If you can see the item you need, tap it with one finger to hear its name spoken. If you miss and maybe hear a boink or the name of another item, touch the screen and keep your finger on the screen and slide it around until you hear the name of the item you were aiming for. Sliding a finger around the screen to hear what is under your finger is called exploring the screen. When you hear the item you want, just lift your finger to leave VoiceOver focused on it and then double tap anywhere with one finger to perform the equivalent of a tap.

An additional way of moving VoiceOver's focus between items on the screen is to use swipe gestures.

Swipe right with one finger to hear the next item on the screen spoken and focus VoiceOver on it.

Swipe left with one finger to go back to the previous item and leave VoiceOver focused on it.

If you want to hear some text spoken, tap its beginning and VoiceOver will begin speaking the first part of the text. If you wish you can proceed through the remaining text a section at a time with swipes right or go backwards to hear something again with a swipe left.

If you prefer to hear the text spoken continuously, first tap the start of the text and then swipe down with two fingers.

VoiceOver speech can be paused and resumed with a two finger tap. 

You can get a lot done with a combination of your vision and a very few VoiceOver gestures. If you'd like to learn more take a look at my more detailed pages on VoiceOver.

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last updated 21 July 2026