Your iPhone has a lot of accessibility features that make it easier to use. Whether you need assistance while using your iPhone or just want to see what's available for convenience purposes, you should take a look at this menu.

We'll walk through the most useful options of the iPhone accessibility menu and explain what they offer.

How to Open the iPhone Accessibility Menu

If you haven't explored the iPhone's Settings app fully, you might not have come across the Accessibility options. At the time of writing, you'll find the Accessibility section under the main Settings list. In previous iOS versions, this was under Settings > General.

In addition to scrolling through the menu, you can also pull down in the Settings menu to open the search bar. Enter whatever you're looking for here to jump right to it.

Let's look at the most useful options in each category of the Accessibility page.

Vision Accessibility Options in iOS

First, let's look at tools that help users who are blind or otherwise have trouble seeing.

VoiceOver

VoiceOver is a screen reader for your iPhone that describes what's happening on the display. It allows you to tap anything to hear a voice read it out loud. There are tons of options to change how it functions, including the voice, input commands, and more.

See our guide to VoiceOver for a more in-depth look.

Zoom

If you have trouble viewing small items on your iPhone, Zoom is quite helpful. Enable it, and you can take a much closer look at the elements on your screen, sliding around as needed.

If you just want text to appear larger, you don't necessarily need to use this option, as there are many choices in the next section for this.

Display & Text Size

This section contains many options that make text and other elements easier to see. Enable Bold Text to add emphasis to all text, or use the Larger Text slider to make text across the OS bigger or smaller.

If you often confuse the sliders that appear across iOS, enable On/Off Labels to add 0 and 1 labels to them for further differentiation.

And if you have difficulty distinguishing between items in the foreground and background, enable Increase Contrast. This changes some colors to help highlight foreground items.

Enable Reduce Transparency to reduce the fancy visual effects that Control Center and other elements of iOS use. This makes it easier to read text without the glossy background.

Those who are colorblind will appreciate the Differentiate Without Color and Color Filters options. The former will adjust elements that rely solely on color to instead use different symbols or similar. For example, a circle that turns green or red to show available/busy status in a chat app would change to a square when red with this enabled.

Colorblind users should also check the Color Filters option. This lets you enable filters like Grayscale or various options based on your form of colorblindness.

Motion

This is a small section, but the Reduce Motion slider is useful for a lot of people. If the zooming movement when you launch apps makes you feel ill, turn this slider on and apps will simply fade into view instead.

It's not as fancy of an effect, but if using your phone makes you motion sick, this should stop it.

Spoken Content

If you enable the Speak Selection slider here, you'll see a Speak option anytime you select text on your device. This could come in handy if you're working on pronunciation, for instance.

For a deeper feature like this, enable Speak Screen and you can swipe down from the top of the screen with two fingers to hear it all spoken aloud.

Physical and Motor iPhone Accessibility

If you have difficulty using your iPhone's buttons or touching the screen, take a look at the options in this section.

Touch

The biggest highlight here is the AssistiveTouch option, which adds a floating icon to your iPhone. Tap this icon to open a menu that lets you navigate around and take various actions. It's useful if your iPhone's Home button isn't working.

Also on this menu, you'll find option to disable some functions, like shaking to undo. The Back Tap option allows you to access shortcuts just by hitting the back of your device.

Voice Control

While Siri makes it easy to send texts and perform other functions on your device, Voice Control goes much further. It allows you to control your entire iPhone using just your voice.

Using it, you can navigate around menus, take actions like snapping a screenshot, and more without ever touching the screen. It's a must-have for anyone who struggles with a touchscreen.

We've looked at Voice Control on iOS in detail if you'd like more info.

Hearing Accessibility for iPhone

If you're deaf or hard of hearing, these options provide help with sounds when using your iPhone.

Sound Recognition

To use this feature, enable the slider in the menu and select Sounds. Here, you can select types of sounds that your iPhone will continuously listen for and alert you about.

For example, you can choose to monitor for Fire alarms, a Cat or Dog, a Car Horn or Door Knock, or even a Baby Crying. These allow your iPhone to hear for you if you're unable to.

The feature notes that it's not for use in emergency situations, so keep in mind that it's not perfect.

Audio/Visual

Inside this section, choose Headphone Accommodations to change the sound setup for compatible headphones. This lets you tune the audio for certain frequencies or boost soft sounds.

Turn on Mono Audio and your iPhone will play stereo content in both channels. This is useful if you're deaf in one ear. Similarly, you can tweak the Balance if you'd like to have audio favor either the left or right channel.

Lastly, under the Visual section, enable LED Flash for Alerts and your iPhone will flash the camera light when there's a new notification. This alerts you without needing a sound.

General iPhone Accessibility

To wrap up, there are a few more accessibility options under the last section worth taking a look at.

Guided Access

Guided Access is an iPhone function that lets you limit your device to a single app. It's great when you hand your phone to a child or nosy friend, or if you want to keep yourself from getting distracted.

Check out how to use Guided Access for everything you need to know.

Siri

In this section, you can enable Type to Siri, which lets you use the keyboard to talk to Siri instead of using your voice. There are a few other tweaks here too, like enabling Always Listen for "Hey Siri" if you want your iPhone to listen for the command even when it's face-down or in your pocket.

Accessibility Shortcut

Pick one option from this list, which includes tools mentioned above like AssistiveTouch, Voice Control, and Zoom, and it will activate when you triple-click the Side (or Home) button on your iPhone.

If you enable more than one, this action will instead bring up a menu with all the shortcuts you've selected, letting you pick from them. Drag the options in the list to re-order them.

Accessibility Makes the iPhone Usable for All

As we've seen, the iPhone has a wide range of accessibility options that let all people enjoy the device. Whether you rely on one of these options or use them for productivity tricks, these tools are worth knowing about.

For more like this, check out handy iPhone shortcuts you should know.