Tips and tricks to build accessible iOS apps

An interesting speech attribute for attributed accessibility labels is accessibilitySpeechIPANotation that lets you specify how VoiceOver should pronounce a label with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsattributedstring/key/accessibilityspeechipanotation

With attributed accessibility labels, your app could now, for example, greet your users in different languages. Note that it will change to the voice of the corresponding language you are switching to. Example code in the image: ```swift let greetingLessonView = UIView() let bcp47LanguageCode = "es-Es" let translatedPhrase = "¡Buenos días! " let attributedLabel = NSMutableAttributedString(string: translatedPhrase,attributes: [.accessibilitySpeechLanguage: bcp47LanguageCode]) attributedLabel.append(NSAttributedString(string: "Means: good morning!")) greetingLessonView.accessibilityAttributedLabel = attributedLabel ```

Attributed accessibility labels are a thing! They'll let you specify (for the whole accessibility label or a portion of it) VoiceOver's language, to read punctuation marks, spell it out, correct the pronunciation, or even change the pitch. @RobRWAPP has a very detailed blog post explaining each one of these attributes: https://mobilea11y.com/blog/attributed-accessibility-labels/ And here's Apple's official documentation for them: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/speech-attributes-for-attributed-strings

Believe it or not, one of the most common accessibility pitfalls I see in iOS apps, is forgetting to configure a suitable accessibility label for buttons with just an image (no title), resulting in VoiceOver saying just: "button". Why for buttons with just an image? If it has a title, the accessibility label gets inferred from it. So here's one that should be very easy for you to find and fix in your app. No more apps that just say: button, button, button, button...! If you are looking for the best explanation on what makes, not good, but great accessibility labels, I really recommend “Writing Great Accessibility Labels” by @jordyn2493 at WWDC. The difference between someone using/loving/deleting your app. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/254/

Accessibility labels should not contain the type of the control, that's a job for the accessibility trait instead. If you have a button with a label like "Close button" and the ".button" trait, VoiceOver will say: "Close button, button".

Good accessibility labels are at the core of good accessible apps. It should be a localized succinct string that tells as much as possible about the component (without including its type) and provides context avoiding verbosity and redundancy.

SwiftUI has equivalent accessibility modifiers for some of UIAccessibility's properties in UIKit. Same basic concepts apply. Label: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/accessibilitylabel(_:)-9ek2h Value: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/accessibilityvalue(_:)-8esl7 Traits: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/accessibilityaddtraits(_:) Hint: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/view/accessibilityhint(_:)-3i2vu

UIAccessibility is the cornerstone of any accessible UIKit app. Among others, understanding what an accessibility label, value, trait or hint are, is key. This is an example of how they could be configured for a custom rating component.

Tomorrow is @gbla11yday! And I'm going to start a challenge, tweeting everyday, for a whole year, about tips, resources, and other useful info on how to develop accessible iOS apps. Are you up for the challenge?