Developing Accessible iOS Apps
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I started my journey in iOS accessibility about 9 years ago, when I was working at the BBC. I even dared to give a talk about it in App Dev Con in 2018. Years later, I’m pretty sure that I was just able to overcome my terror of public speaking thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect. I was at that point where you’ve just started learning about something, become passionate about it, and vastly overestimate how much you actually know. It only takes digging a little deeper to realise how vast any topic is, and that one will probably never master it, but can just hope to be in a continuous learning process. And accessibility is no different. Not to discourage anyone! The truth is that a few basic tools in your toolbox can bring you a very long way towards offering a very good experience. As someone said, we are actually not in need of experts, but in need of basic knowledge.
Starting something new: The Advent of iOS Accessibility. Twenty-four days of exploring some of the most common accessibility issues I’ve encountered, how to identify them, and—most importantly—how to fix them. Hope you enjoy the series!
You may know that you can configure a UI component with an accessibility label. The accessibility label is the name of the component. You can also configure an accessibility trait. The accessibility trait is the role of the component, it gives the user information on how they can interact with it. When using VoiceOver, the trait is usually vocalised after the accessibility label.
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Double Tap
Weekend: Building Accessible Games and Reading Tools
Shaun Preece talks with Dani about building RetroRapid! and Xarra! with accessibility at the center, from multiple ways to play to reading and listening with synchronized text.
Swift Over Coffee
S4E7: Progress over perfection
To celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Mikaela and Paul recorded a special episode live at ARCtic Conference in Oulu, Finland, with a distinguished panel of accessibility champions: Rob Whitaker, Dani Devesa Derksen-Staats and Klemens Strasser. If accessibility seems like an overwhelming subject, don't panic; we show you not just why but also give you tips on how to get started with ensuring your apps are as accessible as possible — and remember the mantra, 'progress over perfection'!
Fostering An Accessibility Culture
Building an accessibility culture isn’t easy, and there’s no clear playbook. But Dani offers insights from his own journey, where small, consistent habits made a big difference.
Smashing Magazine
#365DaysIOSAccessibility
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Abstracting your interface in a way that can offer multiple input and output mechanisms is key when developing software with an accessibility mindset. Apple has brought this to the next level in visionOS. Create accessible spatial experiences
In UIKit you can create keyboard shortcuts by overriding the keyCommands for your view controller, which is an array of UIKeyCommand. A bit of a different approach to how you'd do it with SwiftUI.
Adding keyboard shortcuts in your SwiftUI apps is extremely easy. Just use the .keyboardShortcut(_:) modifier. When pressing and holding the command key, the shortcut will appear in the shortcuts list.
