#365DaysIOSAccessibility

Day 16

Better relative date and weekday labels

3 Jun 2022

accessibilityLabeliOS

By

Dani Devesa Derksen-Staats

Two more examples on better accessibility labels for abbreviations. "4 days ago" is better than "4 D", with a RelativeDateTimeFormatter and a spellOut units style. "Monday" is better than "Mon", accessing the weekdaySymbols from a Calendar.

Apple Watch drawing showing the example from the tweet. Code showing how you can get a readable version for VoiceOver by using a RelativeDateFormatter with a spell out unit style and the weekdaySymbols array from a calendar.

Some useful links:

Relative Date Time Formatter: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/relativedatetimeformatter

Units Style: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/relativedatetimeformatter/unitsstyle-swift.enum/spellout

Weekday symbols: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/calendar/weekdaysymbols

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Day 43

image trait unlocks Image Explorer

Images that convey important information should have the .image accessibility trait and provide an alternative text in the accessibility label. "Image" will be added to VoiceOver's utterance and the user will be able to use Image Explorer. Image Explorer is fairly new, introduced just a couple years ago. But if you were appropriately configuring the image trait, users suddenly got this new functionality for free. Isn't that awesome? With VoiceOver on, open Image Explorer by swiping up in an image and double tapping. It lets users find people (with a basic description and positioning in the photo), objects or text in images, using on-device intelligence. It is very cool!

Day 37

selected trait announces before the label

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 1

UIAccessibility: label, value, trait, and hint

UIAccessibility is the cornerstone of any accessible UIKit app. Among others, understanding what an accessibility label, value, trait or hint are, is key. This is an example of how they could be configured for a custom rating component.

Content © Daniel Devesa Derksen-Staats on Accessibility up to 11! is licensed under CC BY 4.0. License details

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