It is possible to embed icons within text using NSTextAttachment and NSAttributedString. If you do, please remember to override the accessibility label, otherwise VoiceOver will announce it as "Attachment.png File".
let magnifyingGlassIcon = UIImage(systemName: "magnifyingglass")!
let searchButton = UIButton()
let searchTutorialLabel = UILabel()
searchButton.accessibilityLabel = "search"
let textAttachment = NSTextAttachment(image: magnifyingGlassIcon)
let string = "Select the button to find elements in the list"
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: string)
let attributedStringIcon = NSAttributedString(attachment: textAttachment)
let iconPlaceholderRange = attributedString.string.range(of: "")!
let iconRange = NSRange(iconPlaceholderRange, in: attributedString.string)
attributedString.replaceCharacters(in: iconRange, with: attributedStringIcon)
searchTutorialLabel.attributedText = attributedString
searchTutorialLabel.accessibilityLabel = string.replacingCharacters(in: iconPlaceholderRange,
with: searchButton.accessibilityLabel!) You may also find interesting...
Do you know when a UI element is greyed out to show that it is disabled? Yes, there is an accessibility trait for that too: .notEnabled. VoiceOver will say “dimmed” after its accessibility label and Voice Control and Switch Control will skip it.
Test manually. Familiarise yourself with different assistive technologies. I find it useful to start with VoiceOver but check out Voice Control, Full Keyboard Access, and others... Remove friction, configuring shortcuts can help. Merry Christmas!
A common example where you need to manually configure the button accessibility trait is for some table/collection view cells. These tend to be “buttons” that perform an action, like playing music, or bring the user to a different screen.
