Day 95

Explore charts with Audio Graphs (AXChart)

21 Aug 2022

Love this feature! Yahoo released the possibility to explore charts with audio, in the finance app, when using screen readers in 2019. You can do now something very similar since iOS 15.

https://coolblindtech.com/yahoo-finance-app-makes-charts-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-users/

Health app is open on the Steps section. When selecting the graph, there is a Audio Graph rotor. When it is selected, you can swipe down for a Describe Chart action, swipe down one more time for the Playing Audiograph action, swipe down again for Chart Details. When double tapping an Audio Graph screen is open. There is also a play button for playing the whole graph. The code shows you how you can conform to AXChart by overriding accessibilityChartDescriptor and it shows how you can build the data series descriptor by mapping your data model into AXDataPoints.

You can move your finger in the x-axes, and it will play a sound with a different pitch depending on the data in the y-axes, making it easier to identify trends in the graphs.

You need to conform to the AXChart protocol by implementing the accessibilityChartDescriptor property.

Documentation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accessibility/audio-graphs

WWDC21 session: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10122/

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You may also find interesting...

@BeMyEyes, founded by @hjwiberg, enables people who are blind and low vision to identify objects by pairing them with volunteers from around the world using their camera. Winner of an Apple Design Award 2021 for Social Impact.

You can add an observer to listen for changes in the content size category, in case it is more convenient than overriding traitCollectionDidChange(_:).

Since iOS 14, you can get a human readable localised name for a UIColor, with a very useful property called accessibilityName, that you can use in accessibility attributes like labels or values. How cool is that? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uicolor/accessibilityname


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