This blog was inspired by Jeff Watkins’ series of blogs on UIButton. UIButton is a fundamental part of building interfaces on iOS. So much so, that it probably doesn’t get the love it deserves. But it’s also really powerful and customisable when used correctly. Accessibility labels on iOS I feel are very similar. They’re fundamental…
When a customer enables an assistive technology to navigate your app the interface that technology navigates isn’t exactly the same as the one visible on the screen. They’re navigating a modified version that iOS creates especially for assistive technology. This is known as the accessibility tree or accessible user interface. iOS does an incredible job…
SwiftUI allows us to read environmental values that might affect how we want to present our UI. Things like size classes and locale for example. We also get the ability to read some of the user’s chosen accessibility settings allowing us to make decisions that will best fit with your customer’s preference. Why? # Before…
Semantic views are not new to SwiftUI, but changes in SwiftUI mean creating them is simple. Semantic views are not so much a language feature. They’re more a technique for manipulating the accessible user interface and improving the experience for assistive technology users. A what view? # A semantic view is not one view, but a…
Accessibility is important. We can take that as a given. But as iOS devs we’re not always sure how to make the most of the accessibility tools that Apple have provided us. We’re lucky as iOS developers that we work on such a forward-thinking accessibility platform. Many people consider Apple’s focus on accessibility for iOS…
One big accessibility improvement in SwiftUI comes in the form of named controls. Nearly all controls and some non-interactive views (see Images) can take a Text view as part of their view builder. The purpose of this is to tie the meaning to the control. Toggle(isOn: $updates) { Text(“Send me updates”) } Imagine a UIKit…
Assistive technology, such as VoiceOver, works in natural reading direction. In English, and most other languages, this means top left through to the bottom right. Mostly this is the right decision for assistive technology to make. This is the order anyone not using assistive technology would experience your app. Sometimes though, we make designs that…
I was honoured in 2019 to be able to give my first full conference talk at CodeMobile. I was then lucky enough to be able to repeat that talk at NSLondon, NSManchester, and SWMobile meetups. As an iOS developer, I know accessibility is important for a huge range of people. But at times I think…
Take a look at your app. Notice the collection of buttons, text, images, and other controls you can see and interact with that make up your app’s user interface. When one of your customers navigates your app with Voice Control, Switch Control, VoiceOver, or any other assistive technology, this isn’t the interface they’re using. Instead,…
I was asked to guest on the iPhreaks podcast to discuss iOS accessibility. We talked about why accessibility is important, how you can improve it in your apps, and some of the changes iOS 13 and SwiftUI bring. unfortunatley iPhreaks don’t provide a transcript, but they do provide a comprehensive write-up on their site.