I can't swipe to unlock my phone or even turn it off :(

I've done that and it doesn't work. There is a white line box around the 'slide to unlock' and a box around the red 'slide to power off' I've restarted the phone several times holding down the home and sleep buttons together. Now what?

Try a reset, no data loss. Hold down the home/sleep button together until you see the apple logo and then release, then wait for the phone to boot back up.

Thanks! This worked for me!!!

OK - I know this works for iphone 4s ios 9.1. BTW: Everyone should turn on "Hey Siri" - go to Settings-General-Siri & go thru prompts to turn on. If you've totally screwed up your accessibility and can't access anything, i.e., can't turn off/reset phone by pressing & holding home button and power button together, can't slide to unlock, and if unlocked, can't tap app to open - IF "Hey Siri" is enabled, you can ask Siri to to "Open Accessibility in Settings." If you cannot choose the desired Accesibility option as you normally would, e.g., by scrolling down and tapping, then tap the screen as many times as necessary to get a menu (that has B&W icons) to pop up. An outline around each menu icon/choice (on this B&W menu) will automatically move from one icon to the next. Choose "Item Control" which will then start to automatically outline each Accessibility Area/option, one after another, indicating when an option can be tapped to choose. TURN OFF ALL "INTERACTION" CONTROLS. If the "Item Control" outline does not move far enough down to the Accessibility area of Interaction Controls, and you cannot swipe down, pop the B&W icon menu up again. Then select the option "More" which is indicated by an outline around a set of dots centered under the B&W icon rows, and you will be able to then choose the "Scroll Down" icon. When you have then scrolled down far enough on the Accessibility screen and see the Interaction control area, choose the "Item Control" icon again from the B&W menu, and this outline will again automatically move from one control to another. Tap/turn off all "Interaction" options. Hope this helps.

I've done that and it doesn't work. There is a white line box around the 'slide to unlock' and a box around the red 'slide to power off' I've restarted the phone several times holding down the home and sleep buttons together. Now what?

I tried the home/sleep reset but did not work. After reading the manual online under reset (page 145-146) it sounded like it might be a setting that accidentally was set called "Assistive Touch" which referred me to page 127. So much for where to find it, the solution was pressing the home key at the bottom 3 times in a row and voila everything was back to normal. Thanks to this discussion page I got on the right track to find it even though the resolution was not here. I have also accidentally set "Voice Control" on in the past and reset that setting using the same push home key 3 times. These setting apparently have been done through a shortcut that I am unaware of having made but pressing the home key 3 times apparently is the solution the these type of issues.

I have an old ipod touch 3rd gen without a camera and I cant swipe to go to my home screen, cant press, when I hold my power button I cant slide to shut off or press cancel. its like my screen is frozen, how do I reboot it? do I need to wait ti it shuts off or what?

Shocking.

I've had several iPhones over the years, I even write software for iPhones & iPads... but today, I bought my wife a brand new iPhone 4s, but even I couldn't get past the very first "Swipe to setup" screen.

For some reason, from coming out of the box, the phone was just reading out the text on whichever control was highlighted on this first start screen. If I tried to tap on any other button, it'd just highlight that control, and read out it's text. I could not work out how the **** to turn this feature off and go to the next screen !

Without this Apple Discussions thread, I would've had absolutely no idea that I needed to "tap the Home button three times" to turn this annoying feature off.

Seriously... it's 2015, the first impression should be more friendly than this...

I found a solution for this, I literally spent 12 hours trying to solve this problem and almost got crazy. Restore your iPhone, the when it asks you to set a password skip this step. Your iPhone won't ask you again to "Swipe to upgrade". The only problem here is that you won't be able to set a password because if you try to do that the "Swipe to upgrade" bug will appear again.

My iPhone 5 just froze like this. Couldn't swipe to unlock, nor to power off. The reset suggested by Apple here did nothing to correct it either.

Then I unplugged it from the wall and it worked fine. I checked the cords were all intact, and changed from a '10 w' power adapter (lying around from an ipad Air) to a '5 w'. It seems my swiping freeze was caused by being plugged into a 10 w adapter.

Hi All, My 5S home button does not work any more and then a month or two later it froze on me, not allowing any swiping. AssistiveTouch (in Settings/General/Accessibility/AssistiveTouch) was therefore already enable months back and still functioning, so I knew it wasn't a screen malfunction. The only way I was able to return the iPhone 5S to a state where I could access it once more was to Drain the battery until it shut the iPhone off. When I plugged the iPhone back in I held the Power button down for approximately ten seconds and left it to gain enough charge to turn on (a few minutes). It then asked me to type in the password, as is standard when it has shut down. The screen was fixed, and active once more, the issue resolved. (I am not sure holding the power button down during plugging the device in was the trigger, more running the battery dead flat, forcing itself to shutting down.

If you have Siri you can ask her to turn off Voiceover.

What iOS are you running? This thread is for an issue that was happening with iOS 9 when it was released a year ago. And you wouldn't be able to go to iOS 9 right now, so need more info about the problem you are describing.

Cheers,

GB

was accessibility and it's been handled

Or how do I shut it off?