I, like many other iPhone users, turn on AssistiveTouch so that I don't have to press the Home button. Historically, this button has been quick to fail, so using the on-screen icon will save some wear-and-tear. And with iOS 9, AssistiveTouch has become customizable! Shocking (for Apple, not much is customizable)!
From Settings > General > Accessibility. Under Interaction make sure AssistiveTouch is enabled. Then tap on Customize Top Level Menu...
My customizations are from the bottom clockwise:
- Home - same as clicking the Home button
- Control Centre - same as swiping up from the bottom of the screen
- Notification Centre - same as swiping down from the top of the screen
- Multitasking - same as double clicking the Home button
- Lock Screen - same as the power button
- Triple-Click - only useful when you assign it something! Read on...
To set up Triple-Click, back in the Accessibility settings, select Accessibility Shortcut. I assign it to Greyscale and Zoom.
Greyscale is what it says - all colors become shades of grey.
But why Zoom? I'm not that blind... instead, I use it to dim the screen. Great for night reading! To set this up, back in Accessibility settings, under Zoom, disable Show Controller and set Zoom Filter to Low Light (bit don't enable the first option called Zoom). Brilliant!
You can select more, like VoiceOver. But I no longer use that, because there is a better way since iOS 8 (I think). Under Speech > enable Speak Screen to swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen to have the contents read out using text-to-speech. What is new is you can now download the Siri Female (Enhanced) voice (about 188 MB). Previously the most natural sounding was Samantha and Karen (Australia).