I’ve noticed that the VoiceOver reads currency amounts correctly when they are below thousand.
Then, for higher amounts, for example 12.225,34 € VoiceOver reads ‘twelve point two two five thirty four euros’
If the amount is formatted without the thousand separator (12225,34 €) this problem doesn’t exist. (VO reads twelve thousand two hundred and twenty five euros and thirty four cents)
Why is the thousand separator a problem for VoiceOver if this formatting is coming from the currency and locale?
This issue exists in English. I changed my device language to Italian and German and in both cases the number was read correctly even with the separator.
Is there a way to make it work in English?
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RSS for tagExplore best practices for creating inclusive apps that cater to users with diverse abilities
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Hi Community,
I'm excited to share R Helper, a speech practice app I built with accessibility as the core focus from day one.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/speak-r-clearly/id6751442522
WHY I BUILT THIS
I personally struggled with R sound pronunciation growing up. It affected my confidence in school and job interviews. That experience taught me how important accessible practice tools are.
R Helper helps children and adults practice R sounds with full accessibility support.
ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES IMPLEMENTED
VoiceOver - complete navigation and feedback
Voice Control - hands-free operation
Dynamic Type - scales to large accessibility sizes
Reduce Motion - respects user preference
Dark Mode - user controllable
High Contrast compatibility
Differentiate Without Color
THE CHALLENGE
Most speech practice apps ignore accessibility. I wanted to change that and prove that specialized educational apps can be fully accessible.
KEY FEATURES
Works 100% offline, no internet needed
Zero data collection, privacy first
Generous free tier with all accessibility features included
10 story missions with gamification
7 languages supported including RTL for Arabic
LESSONS LEARNED
Accessibility is not hard when you prioritize it from the start. VoiceOver labels and hints make a huge difference. Testing with accessibility features enabled is essential. Standard SwiftUI components handle most accessibility automatically. Reducing motion significantly helps users with vestibular issues.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Built with SwiftUI, targets iOS 17 and up. Universal app for iPhone and iPad. Fully offline using CoreData and local storage. No third party analytics, privacy focused.
QUESTIONS FOR THE COMMUNITY
What accessibility features do you find users request most? How do you test accessibility features efficiently?
WHATS NEXT
I'm currently working on expanding the word library, adding more story content, improving haptic feedback
Thanks for reading.
Nour
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
Education and Kids
Education
Machine Learning
Apple Intelligence
I did the 18.3 update over the weekend and every contact and their information (family names, addresses, photos etc) that was added to my phone over the last year is completely gone. I’ve spent hours on the phone with Apple and their “top” senior account employees with no resolution. I am told my case has been escalated to engineering and they will get back to me in one week. I have zero confidence my issue will be resolved. I’ve gone over and over every action done over the weekend and the only thing I did was erase some emails and do the update. There has to be a way they can see every action made on my phone to find the issue.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
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!
Hey folksI, I would like to ask for help on this topic:
I think this is exactly the same problem Combobox not working with VoiceOver after… - Apple Community.
VoiceOver also breaks the combobox from the official ARIA W3C website https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/combobox/examples/combobox-autocomplete-list/. When VO is turned off, I can use the up/down arrow to go through the menu items from the dropdown, but when VO is turned on, the up/down arrows cannot access the dropdown menu items.
Is there an official tutorial on how to control it using voice over?
Kind regards,
Jakub
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Hey,
We've run into an issue where WKWebView contents are not always available for VoiceOver users. It seems to occur when WKWebView contents are loaded asynchronously.
I have a sample project where this can be reproduced and a video showing the issue. See FB21257352
The only solution we currently see is forcing an update continuously using UIAccessibility.post(notification: .layoutChanged, argument: nil), but this is ofc a last resort as it may have other unintended side effects.
Hello!
I was doing some accessibility testing for my app and found out that when the user switches the text size, all of the data in the text fields is reset, which causes major disruption.
I've tried looking for documentation, but all I've found is information on how to dynamically scale the UI for different text sizes, which I've already implemented.
My guess is that every time Dynamic Type registers a change, it redraws my UI instead of just updating it.
How can I make sure the data is not reset when the text size changes?
Hello Albert!
I am experiencing some strange bugs around DeviceActivityEvents (part of the DeviceActivity framework) on iOS 26 / iOS 26.1 / iOS 26.2 beta:
When creating a DeviceActivityEvent we can assign a threshold and applicationTokens.
The idea is, that after the user has spent said threshold on said apps, eventDidReachThreshold() is called.
The property includesPastActivity is set to false.
On iOS 26 however, it happens (quite reliably after updating to a new beta seed) quite often that eventDidReachThreshold() is called immediately (after a couple of seconds) instead of waiting for the threshold to be met.
Is anyone else seeing similar issues on iOS 26 / iOS 26.1 / iOS 26.2 beta?
Only workaround I have found is to ask users to revoke and re-grant Screen Time permissions. This only holds for about two weeks though or at most until the next iOS 26 beta update is installed, so it is not a permanent solution unfortunately.
Feedback (incl. sysdiagnoses and sample project) is filed under:
FB18061981
FB18927456
One of our users has filed their own feedback request as well:
FB20817853
Thanks a lot for any help on this!
Have tried to join the developer programme and says its still pending after 3 days.
Anyone any idea how long the procedure takes??
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
System settings => Accessibility => System Voice => the little (i) beside the pulldown => Voices => THIS SCREEN will allow you to download Premium Voices
Is there a way to trigger this screen programmatically. Or at least a link to get my users there without having to dig thru that swamp of screens?
I have an issue in my app when it is used together with the assistive access feature.
For authentication, we are using the capacitor firebase authentication plugin (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@capacitor-firebase/authentication) which enables users to login via apple (FirebaseAuthentication.signInWithApple(...)), google (FirebaseAuthentication.signInWithGoogle(...)), or email. Works just fine. However, when the assistive access feature is enabled, the login fails for apple ("The operation couldn't be completed. com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError error 1000) and google ("The user canceled the sign-in flow).
It seems like the popups for sign-in are blocked and therefore an error is returned immediately. The popups may be blocked by assistive access, causing the capacitor plugin to be unable to authenticate.
I have tested this on my iPhone 12 Pro using iOS 17.7
I would appreciate any suggestions to handle this issue!
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Hello,
Whenever I put accessibility focus on an image and if image has some text in it, voiceover reads that text along with image's accessibility label.
Is there a way to programmatically turn off text recognition on images for accessibility?
I couldn't find any relevant accessibility API's that could help here.
Thanks!
I've just received an email from Apple regarding the Global Accessibility Awareness Day and some forthcoming sessions to promote their accessibility features.
What a joke.
For many years, Apple refuses to provide the most basic accessibility requirement on macOS:
LET USERS DISABLE ALL NON-CONSENSUAL UNSOLICITED ANIMATIONS AND OTHER UI CONVULSIONS.
The scourge of animations started from macOS Lion.
Yes, many of them can be, fortunately, disabled through some obscure Terminal commands (that is, if the user is lucky enough to discover them on some obscure internet resources).
The "Reduce motion" control in System Settings is a fake option that doesn't do anything.
And there are two most glaring accessibility violations that cannot be disabled:
Scroll bar rollover highlight effect introduced on macOS 10.7.3. Every time you move the cursor over a scroll bar, the bar gets highlighted. It results in bringing the user's attention to random scroll bars for no reason whatsoever just because the cursor happens to pass over the bar at some point. HUNDREDS of unnecessary, annoying events of distraction daily!
Expand/collapse animation of NSOutlineView (such as when we open/close a folder in the list view in the Finder, as well as any other app that's using outline views). It's extremely annoying, distracting, and time-wasting.
All feedback submitted about this through the years remains mostly ignored (except for a few cases where I received some ridiculous replies from employees who, apparently, are barely familiar with Macs in general).
Apple does NOT care about accessibility. Not only this, but it's obvious that Apple is, in fact, intentionally abusing those users who can't tolerate distracting, time-wasting animations and UI convulsions.
Feedback number: FB20451665
When building with Xcode 26, Voice Over is reporting an extra tab when swiping through tabs. Please see the sample project below:
/*
This is a Sample project to show that I believe there is a Voice Over bug in iOS 26.
When swiping through tabs with Voice Over active, there always appears to be an extra tab.
Here I have 5 tabs, when on tab one VO reads out tab 1 of 6, then tab 2 of 6, all the way to the last tab, when voice over reads out tab 5 of 6. Never tab 6 of 6.
Is there a possibility that voice over is picking up the underlying `more` tab and reading that out?
This has also been reportedly found in the Files app here:
https://www.applevis.com/comment/195441#comment-195441
*/
struct ContentView: View {
var body: some View {
TabView {
/// Activating this has Voice over telling us there are 6 Tabs.
Tab(RootTab.home.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") {
Text("This is the \(RootTab.home.title.capitalized) screen")
}
.accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.home.title.capitalized) tab")
.accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.home.title.capitalized) tab")
Tab(RootTab.diary.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") {
Text("This is the \(RootTab.diary.title.capitalized) screen")
}
.accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.diary.title.capitalized) tab")
.accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.diary.title.capitalized) tab")
Tab(RootTab.meals.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") {
Text("This is the \(RootTab.meals.title.capitalized) screen")
}
.accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.meals.title.capitalized) tab")
.accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.meals.title.capitalized) tab")
Tab(RootTab.knowledge.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") {
Text("This is the \(RootTab.knowledge.title.capitalized) screen")
}
.accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.knowledge.title.capitalized) tab")
.accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.knowledge.title.capitalized) tab")
Tab(RootTab.profile.title, systemImage: "circle.fill") {
Text("This is the \(RootTab.profile.title.capitalized) screen")
}
.accessibilityLabel("\(RootTab.profile.title.capitalized) tab")
.accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(RootTab.profile.title.capitalized) tab")
/// Activating this also has Voice over telling us there are 6 Tabs.
// ForEach(RootTab.allCases, id: \.self) { tab in
//
// Text("This is the \(tab.title.capitalized) screen")
// .tabItem {
// Label(tab.title.capitalized, systemImage: "circle.fill")
// }
// .accessibilityLabel("\(tab.title.capitalized) tab")
// .accessibilityHint("Double tap to open the \(tab.title.capitalized) tab")
// }
}
}
enum RootTab: CaseIterable {
case home
case diary
case meals
case knowledge
case profile
var title: String {
switch self {
case .home:
"home"
case .diary:
"diary"
case .meals:
"meals"
case .knowledge:
"knowledge"
case .profile:
"profile"
}
}
}
}
I'm curious if anyone else can see this issue, or if anyone knows of a workaround for it.
写了个自己用的app,在自己手机上测试中,隔一周左右就打不开了,显示不再可用。
ps.没花钱买开发者账号,app也不打算发布。
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
I have an app that needs Input Monitoring permissions to get keyboard access in the background. I've attempted to use both IOHIDCheckAccess(kIOHIDRequestTypeListenEvent) and IOHIDRequestAccess(kIOHIDRequestTypeListenEvent), but they always return denied, even though I have given the permission for Input Monitoring to the app in Settings.
Is there something I need to put in my Info.plist to enable this permission to work?
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
We've identified a regression in iOS 26.0 and 26.1 Beta 4 where AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language:) no longer respects user-selected voices from Accessibility settings.
Issue: When users select a specific voice in Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices, calling AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language:) returns the system default voice instead of the user's selection. This worked correctly in iOS 18.6.2.
Particularly affects:
Third-party speech synthesis voices (CereProc, Grammatek, etc.)
Apps relying on automatic voice selection based on user preferences
Example:
// User selected CereProc Heather for en-GB in Accessibility settings
let voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "en-GB")
print(voice?.name) // iOS 18.6.2: "HEATHER", iOS 26: "Daniel" (system default)
Interesting observation: The new Accessibility Reader feature in iOS 26 correctly uses the user-selected voice, but Tap to Speak and the API both ignore the setting.
Tested methods:
AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language:)
AVSpeechUtterance auto-selection
Reflection for new APIs
All return the system default voice, not the user's preference.
Filed: FB[20271264]
Has anyone else encountered this? Any known workarounds to programmatically access the user's preferred voice selection?
Hello,
I am working on a Braille keyboard by using HID approach.
Current the device works with iPhone 11 and SE3.
However, when tested in iPhone 6s with iOS 15, although the device can be connected and recognized as Braille device in VoiceOver screen, the phone shows no response to key press report.
Would there be any requirement at points such as HID descriptor for iPhone 6s support on Braille device? If iPhone 6s does not support such devices, what is the minimum system requirements?
Thank you!
Haptic or Sound queue to allow for the accessibility of the blind (sound) and deaf population (haptic) for even knowing when location services and the camera were last used?
Also, the grey notification rather than the purple notification for location services should appear for the full 24 hours after an application has used the app, if the correct description is within the "copy" of Settings
The green light lets them know that the application has changed to the camera and fade out orange light both could even have subtle simply click sounds, like a
shutter, big haptic, softer sound, but editable in Settings, of course
Can you guys like probably make Visual Intelligence available for the action button on the iPhone 16e? It should be only for iPhones that use A18 and future gen apple chips.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General