Tutorial by Examples

Mark your UIView subclass as an accessible element so that it is visible to VoiceOver. myView.isAccessibilityElement = YES; Ensure that the view speaks a meaningful label, value, and hint. Apple provides more details on how to choose good descriptions in the Accessibility Programming Guide.

The accessibility frame is used by VoiceOver for hit testing touches, drawing the VoiceOver cursor, and calculating where in the focused element to simulate a tap when the user double-taps the screen. Note that the frame is in screen coordinates! myElement.accessibilityFrame = frameInScreenCoordina...

VoiceOver works great most of the time, breezily reading aloud screens full of content and intuitively following the user. Alas, no general solution is perfect. Sometimes only you, the app developer, know where VoiceOver should be focused for an optimal user experience. Fortunately, VoiceOver listen...

In many cases, content within a single screen will update with new or different content. For example, imagine a form that reveals additional options based on the user’s answer to a previous question. In this case, a “layout change” notification lets you either announce the change or focus on a new e...

Announcements are useful for alerting users to events that don’t require any interaction, such as “screen locked” or “finished loading.” Use a more specific announcement to notify users of screen changes or more minor layout changes. UIAccessibilityPostNotification(UIAccessibilityAnnouncementNotifi...

VoiceOver navigates from top-left to bottom-right, irrespective of the view hierarchy. This is usually how content is arranged in left-to-right languages since sighted individuals tend to scan the screen in an “F-shaped pattern”. VoiceOver users will expect to navigate the same way as typical users....

VoiceOver can navigate many apps on iOS because most UIKit classes implement UIAccessibilityProtocol. Features that don’t represent onscreen elements using UIView, including apps that leverage Core Graphics or Metal to perform drawing, must describe these elements for accessibility. As of iOS 8.0, t...

Modal views completely capture the user’s attention until a task is complete. iOS clarifies this to users by dimming and disabling all other content when a modal view, such as an alert or popover, is visible. An app that implements a custom modal interface needs to hint to VoiceOver that this view d...

Most UIKit classes, including UIView, adhere to UIAccessibilityProtocol and return correct values by default. It’s easy to take for granted that a UIView set to hidden is also absent from the accessibility hierarchy and won’t be navigated by VoiceOver. While this default behavior is usually sufficie...