How Do I Type with IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)?
You should normally not have a problem making the IPA keyboard work. It uses "dead keys" to create the IPA characters. A “dead key” is a key that does not generate a character, but rather changes the character generated by a following keystroke. For example, in the IPA keyboard, to get the “ə”,you would type the dead key “=” followed by the “e” (=e).  Charts showing the how all the IPA characters are made this way can be found in this PDF.