#365DaysIOSAccessibility

Day 43

image trait unlocks Image Explorer

30 Jun 2022

VoiceOveraccessibilityLabeliOS

By

Dani Devesa Derksen-Staats

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.

App shows how you can access Image Explorer for accessibility elements with the image accessibility trait, by using the rotor. The Image Explorer feature lets you find people, text and objects in images with VoiceOver, using computer vision algorithms that provide basic descriptions. For a Ted Lasso art cover, VoiceOver is describing the main character as: “Slight right profile of a person’s face with straight brown hair, including facial hair, smiling, near top-edge”.

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!

Some of you have asked me how you can support what I do. This would really help, and would be hugely appreciated:

  • Find these posts useful? Share them at work, on social media, or with anyone that might find them interesting. Let's spread the word!

  • Check out any of my apps or games: Xarra!, RetroRapid!, or Mestre!.

    • A download and a review go a long way. They're free by default. On the App Store, ratings and reviews really help more people discover them.

    • Finding any of them useful? If so, and if you can afford it, purchasing lifetime access to all features or subscribing lets me buy the coffee that keeps me caffeinated. Caffeine keeps me going to maintain the apps, bring in new features that I hope you'll love, and keep writing.

You may also find interesting...

Day 175

Input labels help keyboard users too

Accessibility Labels are not just for VoiceOver, and Accessibility User Input Labels are not just for Voice Control. The latter will also help Full Keyboard Access users to find elements on the screen by different names. Good API design!

Day 200

Don't miss visual cues in accessibility labels

There are details conveying important information that are shown visually with little icons, badges, progress bars, and similar cues that can be missed when they are not added as part of the accessibility label or accessibility value of a UI component.

Day 13

Speak punctuation with accessibilitySpeechPunctuation

With the attribute accessibilitySpeechPunctuation, you can ask VoiceOver to speak any punctuation marks in your attributed accessibility label, if that is what you want. Good for code snippets?

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

← Day 44
Day 42 →