If your watch app has good VoiceOver support, chances are you'll also have good Assistive Touch support. But an improvement you can make is to implement a quick action (triggered with a double pinch) when there is a main action you can perform.

If your watch app has good VoiceOver support, chances are you'll also have good Assistive Touch support. But an improvement you can make is to implement a quick action (triggered with a double pinch) when there is a main action you can perform.


Assistive Touch for the Apple Watch works like magic. It lets you use your watch with gestures with the hand of the same arm you are wearing your watch on. No need to use your nose! If you don't have it on, is because you don't know about it.

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!

Today I want to share something I use a lot. You can convert any article into a “podcast” by enabling Speak Screen in Accessibility Settings, switching to Safari’s Reader Mode and swiping down with two fingers from the top of the screen. I think it is a good example of how if we all knew more about how to use the assistive tech available in iOS, we would find ourselves using more of them, more often, exemplifying quite well that accessibility benefits everyone.
Content © Daniel Devesa Derksen-Staats — Accessibility up to 11!