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VoiceOver for Accessibility Labels with Localization
Hello! I'm adding VoiceOver support for my app, but I'm having an issue where my accessibility value is not being spoken. I have made a helper class that creates an NSString from a double and converts it to the user's region currency. CurrencyFormatter.m + (NSString *) localizedCurrencyStringFromDouble: (double) value { NSNumberFormatter *formatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init]; formatter.numberStyle = NSNumberFormatterCurrencyStyle; formatter.locale = [NSLocale currentLocale]; NSString *currencyString = [formatter stringFromNumber: @(value)]; [formatter release]; return currencyString; } View Contoller self.checkTotalLabel.accessibilityLabel = NSLocalizedString(@"Total Amount", @"Accessibility Label for Total"); self.checkTotalLabel.accessibilityValue = [CurrencyFormatter localizedCurrencyStringFromDouble: total]; I'm confused on whether the value should go into the accessibility label or not. When the currency is just USD and the language is English, it's a simple fix. But when the currency needs to be converted, I'm not sure where to go from here. If anyone has any guidance, it would help me a lot! Thank you!
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Jul ’25
Accessibility issue varification.
I am writing an email to a software engineer at Starbucks. In it, I want to make him aware of a Voice Over accessibility issue that I think I know the cause of, but want to verify it here. The issue is nothing happens like it should after entering text into an edit field, then pressing enter. What should happen when pressing enter is that the next page is displayed. However, it does not. Am I right in my guess that the developer has the page hidden? If not, what could it be? Please provide code with comments to fix this issue.
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278
Nov ’24
How to Enable Group Navigation Behavior for Custom Views in 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?
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385
Mar ’25
Is it possible to animate the accessibility frame on iOS and macOS?
Say I have a UI element that moves on the screen. Is it possible to update its accessibility frame as it moves while VoiceOver is focused on it? From my tests, VoiceOver ignores UIAccessibilityLayoutChangedNotification if it's sent repeatedly in a short period of time on iOS, while sending NSAccessibilityLayoutChangedNotification on macOS triggers VoiceOver to reannounce the focused element repeatedly.
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Jul ’25
Having trouble with Accessibility API of the ApplicationServices framework
After replacing Big Sur OSX 11.0 with the latest 11.5, my app's AXObserverAddNotification methods fails. Here is sample code I tested from StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/853833/how-can-my-app-detect-a-change-to-another-apps-window AXUIElementRef app = AXUIElementCreateApplication(82695); // the pid for front-running Xcode 12.5.1 CFTypeRef frontWindow = NULL; AXError err = AXUIElementCopyAttributeValue( app, kAXFocusedWindowAttribute, &frontWindow );     if ( err != kAXErrorSuccess ){         NSLog(@"failed with error: %i",err);     } NSLog(@"app: %@  frontWindow: %@",app,frontWindow); 'frontWindow' reference is never created and I get the error number -25204. It seems like the latest Big Sur 11.5 has revised the Accessibility API or perhaps there is some permission switch I am unaware of that would make things work. What am I doing wrong?
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Jun ’25
Find My
My husband and I have the same iPhones. We both have location sharing on. When he uses Find My, he can see my location. He has shared his location with me, but my phone always says “No location found,” We have the exact same settings on our phones and have followed the instructions to use Find My. Is there something wrong with my phone since I cannot see his location? I have no trouble seeing the location of another family member. Or is something wrong with my husbands phone? This is so frustrating.
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493
Nov ’24
VoiceOver Headings Accessibility Rotor with SwiftUI on iOS
Hi, On iOS, I'd like to mark views that are inside a LazyVStack as headers for VoiceOver (make them appear in the headings rotor). In a VStack, you just have add .accessibilityAddTraits(.isHeader) to your header view. However, if your view is in a LazyVStack, that won't work if the view is not visible. As its name implies, LazyVStack is lazy so that makes sense. There is very little information online about system rotors, but it seems you are supposed to use .accessibilityRotor() with the headings system rotor (.accessibilityRotor(.headings)) outside of the LazyVStack. Something like the following. .accessibilityRotor(.headings) { ForEach(entries) { entry in // entry.id must be the same as the id of the SwiftUI view it is about AccessibilityRotorEntry(entry.name, id: entry.id) } } It kinds of work, but only kind of. When using .accessibilityAddTraits(.isHeader) in a VStack, the view is in the headings rotor as soon as you change screen. However, when using .accessibilityRotor(.headings), the headers (headings?) are not in the headings rotor at the time the screen appears. You have to move the accessibility focus inside the screen before your headers show up. I'm a beginner in regards to VoiceOver, so I don't know how a blind user used to VoiceOver would perceive this, but it feels to me that having to move the focus before the headers are in the headings rotor would mean some users would miss them. So my question is: is there a way to have headers inside a LazyVStack (and are not necessarily visible at first) to be in the headings rotor as soon as the screen appears? (be it using .accessibilityRotor(.headings) or anything else) The "SwiftUI Accessibility: Beyond the basics" talk from WWDC 2021 mentions custom rotors, not system rotors, but that should be close enough. It mentions that for accessibilityRotor to work properly it has to be applied on an accessibility container, so just in case I tried to move my .accessibilityRotor(.headings) to multiple places, with and without the accessibilityElement(children: .contain) modifier, but that did not seem to change the behavior (and I could not understand why accessibilityRotor could not automatically make the view it is applied on an accessibility container if needed). Also, a related question: when using .accessibilityRotor(.headings) on a screen, is it fine to mix uses of .accessibilityRotor(.headings) and .accessibilityRotor(.headings)? In a screen with multiple type of contents (something like ScrollView { VStack { MyHeader(); LazyVStack { /* some content */ }; LazyVStack { /* something else */ } } }), having to declare all headers in one place would make code reusability harder. Thanks
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78
Jun ’25
Accessibility Issue - Date Picker Colour Contrast
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.
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130
Mar ’25
How to handle AX (Keyboard Access & VoiceOver) for AttributedString used in UILabel
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.
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117
Mar ’25
The accessibility app keeps opening by itself on my iPhone 12 Pro. Can anyone please help me?
It’s very annoying but on my iPhone 12 Pro I keep getting the accessibility app with the microphone on and it keeps opening the app by itself and it’s a blank screen and every time I close it it just reopens. I don’t know why it keeps doing this, but it drives me crazy. Does anyone know what else to do? I also have the beta iOS 26 but it’s been doing this even with the past update.
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82
Jun ’25
Voice-over mode issues
Added a view controller in the storyboard, added a tableview in this view, and added a cell under the table, when I run the APP to jump to the page, when using the narration function, I find that when I use three fingers to swipe up or down, a sentence will be broadcast in English, I want to no longer change the accessiblity of the cell, when I perform the behavior of swiping up or down with three fingers, Broadcast how Chinese should be implemented.
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63
Jun ’25
How to use core spotlight ?
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 ?
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Mar ’25
"illegal character encoding in string literal" warnings in Xcode
Good day! I have a long-term project ported all the way up from old Think C through many versions of Xcode. Its source files are encoded in "Western (Mac OS Roman)". Some of my error messages have characters outside the straight ASCII character set (i.e. "å"). The editor correctly displays these, but I get plenty of Illegal Character warnings and the messages do not display properly. I imagine there's a way to have seperate files of localized text for internationalized applications, but I am the only end-user of this application, and it used to just plain work in earlier Xcode versions. Furthermore, there must be developers throughout Europe who use such characters in string literals, just typing in their native languages, straight off their keyboards. I was thinking that there must be a Clang setting or something, but have been unable to find it, and an internet search turns up no solution except to cumbersomely escape each individual character. I can't imagine that a French programmer does that every time they want to type "è", "é", or "à"! Any help? (Disclaimer: I'm an English speaker and only use such characters whimsically, but want to keep them for legacy's sake.) Thanks.... p.s. using Xcode 15.3, and under Settings->Text Editing->Editing, "Western (Mac OS Roman)" is already selected as the default text encoding with "Convert existing files on save" checked.
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146
Jun ’25