Whoever said “there’s no such thing as a wrong opinion” never encountered a post like yours.
Touch-screen gestures are the best part of having a touch screen, and Apple’s implementation of such gestures is so well-received it’s been licensed and borrowed and imitated by all of its rivals.
I can’t imagine having a touch screen without swipe to scroll / pinch to zoom / press-and-hold for pop-ups, and so on.
It completely eliminates the need for physical buttons or on-screen real estate being covered by fake buttons.
All that being said, have you explored iOS’s robust Accessibility features? Geared toward people with limited abilities / handicaps, you can modify how some gestures respond and even add on-screen buttons in some ways. It might be worth checking out.