Tagged with accessibility

• Hiding A SwiftUI View From Switch Control

  I'm currently working on a project to enhance the accessibility of an app, and I'm learning a lot about how far iOS's accessibility support goes beyond a screen reader. There's a really cool technology called Switch Control that enables users to control their iPhones using an external tool, like a button, a game controller, or even a straw.

  I ran into a problem with supporting Switch Control when I was building a custom View component in SwiftUI. The component is essentially a label, and shouldn't be visible to Switch Control. But it wasn't easy to find out how to hide it. Switch Control is such a vague term that I got a lot of results for custom control components called switches, and some results about using a Nintendo Switch controller too.

  The solution to my problem was quite easy, once I found it. A one-line SwiftUI modifier:

  .accessibilityRespondsToUserInteraction(false)
  

  Here is the relevant part of the docs from Apple:

  Explicitly set whether this Accessibility element responds to user interaction and would thus be interacted with by technologies such as Switch Control, Voice Control or Full Keyboard Access.

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  Find out more about Switch Control

  Switch Control is a really cool technology, but not widely known or talked about. Here are some interesting articles from people using it, if you want to find out more:

  • App accessibility for Switch Control from WWDC 2020.
  • I Used a Switch Control for a Day.
  • Switch Control Changed My World.

  4 September 2024

  • accessibility
  • swiftui

• Accessibility Affects Everyone

  I've had the text size on my phone set as small as possible for as long as I can remember. For one simple reason: to maximise the available space. My close-up vision has always been fine, so this has worked for years now.

  A couple of years ago my wife and I had our first child. And my sleep went from 8 regular hours a night, to maybe 6 interrupted hours.

  And then we had our second child last year. Now I get maybe 4 hours of interrupted sleep. (Nobody ever talks about how badly children can affect your sleep. It's not just newborn babies!)

  What's this got to do with my eyesight? Well, a little while after my first child was born, I started getting occasional headaches. When I spoke to the doctor, they said they often see this kind of migraine due to stress, and lack of sleep. Two things which come with a newborn!

  When my second was born, it started happening a lot more often. Sleep and stress are hard factors to control in this situation, so I started looking for anything else which might be connected. And I realised that, when I was more tired, I was straining my eyes more to see my phone screen.

  I've since changed my default text size by bumping it up a couple of notches. No more straining my eyes to read when I'm tired. And more importantly, no more headaches.

  People often think things like Dynamic Text on iOS are for a minority of users. Accessibility is often an afterthought in apps. But accessibility tools are useful to everyone, in all sorts of unexpected circumstances.

  Here's an example of just how different 2 steps in test size can look (tap/click to open in a new tab):

  

  The image on the right gives me headaches. That's not even about ease of use, that's a health issue.

  Make sure your apps support Dynamic Text, VoiceOver, and any other accessibility frameworks that are relevant on whichever platform you're working on.

  11 January 2023

  • accessibility