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!
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When using Voice Control, say: "Show names". You'll see all the accessibility labels for interactive elements overlaid on the screen. It will help you identify labels that can be improved, or actually missing. Labels are not just for VoiceOver.
This is a small trick I use to compose complex accessibility labels/values when, for a UI component, some elements might not be in all its instances. An array of optional Strings, compact map, and join all elements by a separator, like a comma.
With accessibilityRepresentation(representation:), you can create a custom component and it can be perceived by assistive technologies as the view you pass as representation. No need to manually configure accessibility attributes. It is one of the most interesting additions to SwiftUI to help you develop accessible UI components. If your custom component behaves similarly to a native one, this is the way to go. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/accessibilityrepresentation(representation:)
