Did you know that you can read the entire iPhone user manual through your browser online? This is also true for Mac, iPad, Apple watch and even the older iPod.
This quick guide though focuses on iPhone.
When you pull up the manual, the default is the current iOS, iOS 16 as of this writing. But a drop-down box lets you select an older version of the user guide. It will change to a newer iOS as the default when that is released.
One big advantage of reading the user guide on the web instead of in the Apple books app is that you can copy and paste any section you want to any format you can handle. For example, using a computer, you can easily grab sections and save them as text or Word processor files or even as individual web pages. You can paste portions of the user guides in to your notes or other favorite note-taking app.
I like to copy sections of the user guide to my Braille display so I can easily refer to them offline. For example, if I don't know how to turn on Quick nav with a bluetooth keyboard I have all the keyboard commands in a file on my Braille display.
I help students at a college, and for one, who only knew how to use a Victor Reader Stream, I put portions of the manual on that for her as text files. That's another advantage: use a device you know how to use to learn a new device if possible. Read the user guide on a device where you are comfortable navigating.
For a low-vision user, saving the portions of the guide you need by printing to PDF can be very helpful as you can zoom the PDF to the size that magnifies it best for your needs.
The start of the section on VoiceOver is here:
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-on-and-practice-voiceover-iph3e2e415f/ios
Keep hitting Next to continue through the VoiceOver section of the user guide.
The page for the start of the guide and its table of contents is here:
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios
Note that the advantage of having the guide in Apple books is that you can read continuously without needing to hit a Next button. In Apple's books apps, go to the store tab and search for iPhone user guide. Each version is its own book so be careful to get the one corresponding to the version of iOS you run.
On the web, finding these guides is also easy: simply google or bing search for the words Apple User guide and the product. For example if you know Windows, use a browser like Edge, Chrome or FireFox to read the guide while you practice the commands on your phone.
Because there's a lot of information, one thing I do is pick the section I most need help with and read slowly while stopping to try out a feature. It's also important for most folks to not spend more than thirty minutes on a task if you are finding it hard. Take a break and do a little each day rather than trying to absorb a lot of information in a cram session!
By Deborah Armstrong, 5 September, 2023
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