Have been following instructions from a similar site as to turning off voice over on I-phone I have single and double tapped through the instructions but it fails to tun it off when I get to Voice over.

Triple tap the Home button.

If you get to the Voiceover setting and it doesn't turn off when you tap it twice you will have to Settings/General/Reset/ - Reset all settings. This will put all iOS settings back to their default, including the home screen layout.

You can also try connecting the phone to iTunes on your computer and clicking the Configure Accessibility button. It's worth a try, but may not resolve the problem.