I’m currently exploring VoiceOver accessibility in iOS and looking for the best way to reduce the number of swipes required to navigate a UITableView. I’ve come across a couple of potential solutions but am unsure which is preferred. Solution 1: Grouping Subviews in Each Cell Combine all subviews inside a UITableViewCell into a single accessibility element. Provide a concise and meaningful accessibilityLabel. Use custom actions (UIAccessibilityCustomAction) or accessibilityActivationPoint to handle interactions on specific elements within the cell. Solution 2: Using UIAccessibilityContainerDataTableCell & UIAccessibilityContainerDataTable Implement UIAccessibilityContainerDataTable for structured table navigation. Make each cell conform to UIAccessibilityContainerDataTableCell, defining its row and column positions. However, I’m finding this approach a bit complex, and I need guidance on properly implementing these protocols. Additionally, in my case, VoiceOver is not navigating to Section 2—I’m not sure why. Questions: Which of these approaches is generally preferred for better VoiceOver navigation? How do I properly implement UIAccessibilityContainerDataTable so that all sections and rows are navigable? Any best practices or alternative recommendations? Would really appreciate any insights or guidance!

I learned that I need to create an iTunes Connect account to publish my book translations on Apple Books, following the instructions on the Apple Support page. I was then directed to the iTunes Connect website. Despite trying multiple Apple accounts with different credit cards on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone, I kept getting the error “This Apple Account does not have a valid credit card on file.” In the end, I began to wonder if iTunes Connect is unavailable in Turkey. What do I need to do to publish content on Apple Books from Turkey? Do I need to obtain a developer account, or is this service not available in Turkey? The Apple customer service representative I contacted in Turkey said they didn’t have information on the matter and directed me here.

iOS 18.3.1, iPhone 16 Pro. I pick photos using connected physical keyboard from the user's photo library using: .photosPicker(isPresented: $viewModel.isImagePickerPresented, selection: $viewModel.selectedImageItem, matching: .images) When picker appears, accessibility focus is moved to "dynamic Island" instead of cancel button. There is no possibility to navigate by keyboard in photos picker view without tapping on this view and move focus to this view manually . I noticed the same behavior in Notes app.

I have a UITextField in my application for entering a state. If I tap on it, a UIPickerView pops up and let's the user select a state (but they can still type too). The issue relates to Full Keyboard Access. If we select the UITextField using an external keyboard, the UIPickerView appears, but in order to get to it the user has to tab through the whole view controller to get to the UIPickerView at the end. What would be nice is to a) move focus directly to the UIPickerView (have it highlighted in blue and scrollable right away with keyboard) or b) make the UIPickerView the next view that's accessible when tabbing over or using the arrow keys. I've tried using: UIAccessibility notifications (both .screenChanged and .layoutChanged, with and without a delay). This ended up only announcing the view, but didn't help with full keyboard access. Making the UIPickerView a first responder when it appears. Attempting to change the accessibilityElements order (but with so many views and views within views, this isn't really a viable option either). Pressing tab + -> (tab and right arrow button) will quickly take the user to the end of the chain of accessibility elements, in other words, to the UIPickerView. But there has to be a cleaner way of just automatically setting the focus to the UIPickerView or making it the next element by pressing the arrow key.

I’ve tried implementing the accessibilityPerformMagicTap() method in a specific UIViewController, its view, and even in AppDelegate, but I am not receiving any callbacks. I directly overrode this method in the mentioned areas, but it never gets triggered when performing a magic tap. How can I properly observe and handle the accessibilityPerformMagicTap() action?

The issue is, I cannot auto acquire bluetooth keyboard focus in PHPickerViewController after enabling 'Full Keyboard Access' in my IPhone 14 with iOS version 18.3.1. The keyboard focus in PHPickerViewController will show, however, after I tapped on the blank space of the PHPickerViewController. How to make the focus on at the first place then? I'm using UINavigationController and calling setNavigationBarHidden(true, animated: false). Then I use this controller to present PHPickerViewController using some configuration setup below. self.configuration = PHPickerConfiguration() configuration.filter = .any(of: filters) configuration.selectionLimit = selectionLimit if #available(iOS 15.0, *), allowOrdering { configuration.selection = .ordered } configuration.preferredAssetRepresentationMode = .current Finally I set the delegate to PHPickerViewController and call UINavigationController.present(PHPickerViewController, animated: true) to render it. Also I notice animation showing in first video then disappear.

Triple tap for screenshot->notification->triple tap detected becomes a part of the screenshot and obscures the top part of screenshot. Thanks

Hi, Our app has a section where, we show to users how to activate "Silence Unknown Callers", because is a crucial feature for our app. But, we saw that 30% of users drop the process here, because we can't open directly that setting option in phone app. We are using this url scheme to open phone settings in iOS 18: if let url = URL(string: "App-prefs:com.apple.mobilephone") { UIApplication.shared.open(url) } But, we don't see other way to open directly the path "silence", like in iOS 17, with this url scheme: prefs:root=Phone&path=SILENCE_CALLS So, do you know if is possible open that option directly? We want to improve our accessibility. Thank you!

I’m currently focused on an element at the bottom of the screen. What is the proper way to quickly navigate to the top element? By default, there’s a four-finger single tap to move to the first element, but should I use the Rotor action instead to focus on the element I need? For example, in the Contacts app while adding a new contact, if I enter a value in a field at the bottom, there’s no quick way to directly save the contact. I have to manually navigate all the way to the top to tap the Done button, which feels a bit inconvenient. Is there a better way to handle this using VoiceOver?

In VoiceOver, when using Group Navigation style, the cursor first focuses on the semantic group. To navigate inside the group, a two-finger swipe (left or right) can be used. This behavior works for default containers like the Navigation Bar, Tab Bar, and Tool Bar. How can I achieve the same behavior for a custom view? I tried setting accessibilityContainerType = .semanticGroup, but it only works for Mac Catalyst. Is there an equivalent approach for iOS?

VoiceOver reads out all visible content on the screen, which is essential for visually challenged users. However, this raises a privacy concern—what if a user accidentally focuses on sensitive information, like a bank account password, and it gets read aloud? How can developers prevent VoiceOver from exposing confidential data while still maintaining accessibility? Are there best practices or recommended approaches to handle such scenarios effectively?

I have implemented a SwiftUI view containing a grid of TextField elements, where focus moves automatically to the next field upon input. This behavior works well on iOS 16 and 17, maintaining proper focus highlighting when keyboard full access is enabled. However, in iOS 18 and above, the keyboard full access focus behaves differently. It always stays behind the actual focus state, causing a mismatch between the visually highlighted field and the active text input. This leads to usability issues, especially for users navigating with an external keyboard. Below is the SwiftUI code for reference: struct AutoFocusGridTextFieldsView: View { private let fieldCount: Int private let columns: Int @State private var textFields: [String] @FocusState private var focusedField: Int? init(fieldCount: Int = 17, columns: Int = 5) { self.fieldCount = fieldCount self.columns = columns _textFields = State(initialValue: Array(repeating: "", count: fieldCount)) } var body: some View { let rows = (fieldCount / columns) + (fieldCount % columns == 0 ? 0 : 1) VStack(spacing: 10) { ForEach(0..<rows, id: \.self) { row in HStack(spacing: 10) { ForEach(0..<columns, id: \.self) { col in let index = row * columns + col if index < fieldCount { TextField("", text: $textFields[index]) .frame(width: 40, height: 40) .multilineTextAlignment(.center) .textFieldStyle(RoundedBorderTextFieldStyle()) .focused($focusedField, equals: index) .onChange(of: textFields[index]) { newValue in if newValue.count > 1 { textFields[index] = String(newValue.prefix(1)) } if !textFields[index].isEmpty { moveToNextField(from: index) } } } } } } } .padding() .onAppear { focusedField = 0 } } private func moveToNextField(from index: Int) { if index + 1 < fieldCount { focusedField = index + 1 } } } struct AutoFocusGridTextFieldsView_Previews: PreviewProvider { static var previews: some View { AutoFocusGridTextFieldsView(fieldCount: 10, columns: 5) } } Has anyone else encountered this issue with FocusState in iOS 18? I really do believe that this is a bug strictly connected to keyboard navigation since I experienced similar problem also on UIKit equivalent of the view. Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Hello, When I listen to title in my app with VoiceOver, it makes a strange sound. This characters make with Korean+number+Alphabet. Is this combination makes some strange sound with voice over? I would like to ask if Apple can fix this issue. Thank you.

I’m trying to add the .header accessibility trait to a UISegmentedControl so that VoiceOver recognizes it accordingly. However, setting the trait using the following code doesn’t seem to have any effect: segmentControl.accessibilityTraits = segmentControl.accessibilityTraits.union(.header) Even after applying this, VoiceOver doesn’t announce it as a header. Is there any workaround or recommended approach to achieve this?

In SwiftUI, the date picker component is breaking in colour contrast accessibility. Below code has been use to create date picker: struct ContentView: View { @State private var date = Date() @State private var selectedDate: Date = .init() var body: some View { let min = Calendar.current.date(byAdding: .day, value: 14, to: Date()) ?? Date() let max = Calendar.current.date(byAdding: .year, value: 4, to: Date()) ?? Date() DatePicker( "Start Date", selection: $date, in: min ... max, displayedComponents: [.date] ) .datePickerStyle(.graphical) .frame(alignment: .topLeading) .onAppear { selectedDate = Calendar.current.date(byAdding: .day, value: 14, to: Date()) ?? Date() } } } #Preview { ContentView() } attaching the screenshot of failure accessibility.

In some places of our app we make use of NSAccessibilityElement subclasses to vend some extra items to accessibility clients. We need to know which item has the VoiceOver focus so we can keep track of it. setAccessibilityFocused: does not get called when accessibility clients focus NSAccessibilityElements. This method is only called when accessibility clients focus view-based accessibility elements (i.e. when a NSView subclass gets focused). At the same time we need to programmatically move VoiceOver focus to those items when something happens. Those accessibility elements inherit from NSObject so we can't make them first responder. Is this the expected behavior? What are our options in terms of reacting to VoiceOver cursor moving around? What are our options in terms of programmatically moving the VoiceOver cursor to a different element? Here's a sample project that demonstrates the first part of the issue: https://github.com/vendruscolo/apple-rdars/tree/master/DTS12368714%20-%20NSAccessibilityElement%20focus%20tracking If you run the app, a window will show up. It contains a button and a red square. If you enable VoiceOver you'll be able to move the cursor over the red square, and a message will be logged. You'll also notice there's an extra element after the red square. That element is available to VoiceOver, however when it gets focuses, no message gets logged.

Hope it's okay to post here - I haven't gotten resolution anywhere else. Apple's iOs Live Captions is supposed to translate speech into written text either on the phone (works like a charm!) or via microphone (think meeting in a conference room). Microphone doesn't work anywhere, anytime on a new iPhone 14 purchased November 2024. Anyone out there want to fix this and help a lot of people who have trouble hearing? I'm part of an entire generation that didn't know we were supposed to protect our hearing at concerts and clubs and worse, thought it was cool to snag a spot by the speakers...

I use AttributedString to create a string containing a link. And I set the AttributedString to UILabel. How should I set up the Accessibility feature to make sure that I can keyboard focus on the substring with link and use keyboard operation to open the link I can VoiceOver the whole string and VoiceOver the substring with link to open the link Thanks a lot.

Watched videos, blog post and downloaded their projects and there the core spot lights works accordingly. I copied code to an empty project and did the same as what they did but still is not working os: macOS and iOS on coredataobject I settled up a attribute to index for spotlight and in object it self I putted the attribute name in display name for spotlight. static let shared = PersistenceController() var spotlightDelegate: NSCoreDataCoreSpotlightDelegate? @MainActor static let preview: PersistenceController = { let result = PersistenceController(inMemory: true) let viewContext = result.container.viewContext for _ in 0..<10 { let newItem = Item(context: viewContext) newItem.timestamp = Date() } do { try viewContext.save() } catch { let nsError = error as NSError fatalError("Unresolved error \(nsError), \(nsError.userInfo)") } return result }() let container: NSPersistentContainer init(inMemory: Bool = false) { container = NSPersistentContainer(name: "SpotLightSearchTest") if inMemory { container.persistentStoreDescriptions.first!.url = URL(fileURLWithPath: "/dev/null") } container.loadPersistentStores(completionHandler: { [weak self] (storeDescription, error) in if let error = error as NSError? { fatalError("Unresolved error \(error), \(error.userInfo)") } if let description = self?.container.persistentStoreDescriptions.first { description.setOption(true as NSNumber, forKey: NSPersistentHistoryTrackingKey) description.type = NSSQLiteStoreType if let coordinator = self?.container.persistentStoreCoordinator { self?.spotlightDelegate = NSCoreDataCoreSpotlightDelegate( forStoreWith: description, coordinator: coordinator ) self?.spotlightDelegate?.startSpotlightIndexing() } } }) container.viewContext.automaticallyMergesChangesFromParent = true } } in my @main view struct SpotLightSearchTestApp: App { let persistenceController = PersistenceController.shared var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { ContentView() .environment(\.managedObjectContext, persistenceController.container.viewContext) .onContinueUserActivity(CSSearchableItemActionType) {_ in print("") } } } } onContinueUserActivity(CSSearchableItemActionType) {_ in print("") } never gets triggered. Sow What am I missing that they dont explain in the blog post or videos ?

In our application we are using UITableView for data population and that TableView cell contains a button. When we are enabling full keyboard access that time only TableView cell is focusing not the button. We need to focus on cell and button differently.