Tips and tricks to build accessible iOS apps

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.

With the button trait VoiceOver will read “button” after the accessibility label and will indicate the user that, when focused, they can double tap anywhere on the screen to interact with it. UIButton has this trait by default.

A component can have more than one accessibility trait, they can be combined. A heading can be a button too, for example. Or a button could be selected. You can insert or remove the selected trait to the button, when needed.

An accessibility trait is the role of the component. Among other things, it gives the user information on how they can interact (or not) with it. When using VoiceOver, the trait is usually (not always) read after the accessibility label. At the time of writing this tweet, there are 18 different accessibility traits: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiaccessibilitytraits Some examples are: button, header, selected, adjustable or not enabled.

Today starts the . Apple announces what new APIs we'll be able to use to make more inclusive and accessible apps. There's also Labs, Digital Lounges and Sessions, for free. Check out the schedule here: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc25/topics/accessibility-inclusion/ Last year, Apple presented Audio Graphs to make graphs more accessible. This year, they introduced Swift Charts, that lets you build a wide variety of charts in SwiftUI and they have great VoiceOver support. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Charts @dnlyong has a great thread going through lots of the new accessibility features presented this year. https://x.com/dnlyong/status/1533897274274639873 As noted by @RobRWAPP and @mecid, Apple is tweaking the style of the SwiftUI accessibility modifiers. https://x.com/RobRWAPP/status/1533900962615762945 Sessions this year include topics like gaming (with Unity), localisation and internationalisation. You can check these (as they get published during the week) and previous accessibility sessions here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/accessibility-inclusion/ SwiftUI lets you now add multiple accessibility actions at once and quick actions to be show by the system when active: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/accessibilityactions(_:)?changes=latest_minor https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/accessibilityquickaction(style:content:)?changes=latest_minor

Do you have a fancy custom loading animation instead of an UIActivityIndicatorView? You may want to check if it has an accessibility label so a VoiceOver user knows that something is happening. Something like "In progress" or "Loading" could work.

You can check if some features, like VoiceOver, are on. Experiences should not diverge too much. It could be used to avoid auto-hiding UI elements. iOS probably checks this to show search fields by default, without having to pull them down. From the documentation: isVoiceOverRunning: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiaccessibility/isvoiceoverrunning

Two more examples on better accessibility labels for abbreviations. "4 days ago" is better than "4 D", with a RelativeDateTimeFormatter and a spellOut units style. "Monday" is better than "Mon", accessing the weekdaySymbols from a Calendar. Some useful links: Relative Date Time Formatter: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/relativedatetimeformatter Units Style: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/relativedatetimeformatter/unitsstyle-swift.enum/spellout Weekday symbols: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/calendar/weekdaysymbols

Tip for abbreviations. Something like "3h 24m" will be read by VoiceOver as "3 h 24 meters". Formatters can help. DateComponentsFormatter with a "spellOut" units style will give you a more suitable label: "three hours, twenty-four minutes" Example code in the image: ```swift let dailyAverageLabel = UILabel() let abbreviatedReadableFormatter = DateComponentsFormatter() abbreviatedReadableFormatter.allowedUnits = [.hour, .minute] abbreviatedReadableFormatter.unitsStyle = .spellOut let abbreviatedReadableDuration = abbreviatedReadableFormatter.string(from: 12240) dailyAverageLabel.accessibilityLabel = abbreviatedReadableDuration ``` Some useful links: * Date Components Formatter: * Units Style: By the way! Formatters are also great for localisation.

Accessibility labels are not just for VoiceOver. If you tweak how they sound by changing spelling, adding spaces, etc. you could be making the experience worse for Voice Control and Braille display users. Attributed accessibility labels can help.

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?

accessibilitySpeechSpellOut asks VoiceOver to speak the sequence of characters. Can be useful for things like promo/reference/authentication codes, phone numbers... it makes more sense to announce each character rather than words and big numbers. Example code in the image: ```swift let codeLabel = UILabel() let attributedLabel = NSAttributedString( string: "BAC1234567D", attributes: [.accessibilitySpeechSpellOut: true] ) title.accessibilityAttributedLabel = attributedLabel ```

accessibilitySpeechPitch lets you emphasise something changing VoiceOver's pitch. The value goes from 0.0 to 2.0. The default is 1.0. Twitter could change pitch to read hashtags, for example, avoiding repetition but still signalling they're there.

accessibilitySpeechIPANotation is useful for indicating how foreign words are pronounced. It really annoys me to hear the word paella constantly mispronounced 😁. You could also specify language, but this way, VoiceOver won't change its voice. Example code in the image: ```swift let recipeNameLabel = UILabel() let attributedLabel = NSAttributedString( string: "Paella", attributes: [.accessibilitySpeechIPANotation: "pɑːˈeɪə"] ) recipeNameLabel.accessibilityAttributedLabel = attributedLabel ```

accessibilitySpeechIPANotation is sometimes handy in English where a word is spelled the same but pronounced differently depending of the context. Some examples are: live, read... Or you may want to correct how VoiceOver pronounces your app's name! Example code in the image: ```swift let liveNewsChannelView = UIView() let attributedLabel = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "24 hour news channel. ") attributedLabel.append(NSAttributedString(string: "Live",attributes: [.accessibilitySpeechIPANotation: "laɪv"])) liveNewsChannelView.accessibilityAttributedLabel = attributedLabel ```