Day 5

23 May 2022

Believe it or not, one of the most common accessibility pitfalls I see in iOS apps, is forgetting to configure a suitable accessibility label for buttons with just an image (no title), resulting in VoiceOver saying just: "button".

Why for buttons with just an image? If it has a title, the accessibility label gets inferred from it. So here's one that should be very easy for you to find and fix in your app. No more apps that just say: button, button, button, button...!

If you are looking for the best explanation on what makes, not good, but great accessibility labels, I really recommend “Writing Great Accessibility Labels” by @jordyn2493 at WWDC. The difference between someone using/loving/deleting your app. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/254/

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Day 37

The .selected accessibility trait indicates when an element has been selected. You’ll notice that VoiceOver announces “selected” before the accessibility label. You can find that in the system for the selected tab in the tab bar, for example.

Day 8

An interesting speech attribute for attributed accessibility labels is accessibilitySpeechIPANotation that lets you specify how VoiceOver should pronounce a label with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsattributedstring/key/accessibilityspeechipanotation

VoiceOver accessibilityLabel accessibilitySpeechIPANotation iOS

Day 31

Hacks are accessibility’s worst enemy. An example. There is a ‘trick’ floating on the internet: if you want a button with an icon to the right of the text, set the semantic content attribute to force right to left. Great way to create focus traps.

Accessibility a11y

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