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At Slack, customer love is our first priority and accessibility is a core tenet of customer trust. We have our own Slack Accessibility Standards that product teams follow to guarantee their features are compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Our dedicated accessibility team supports developers in following these guidelines throughout the development process. We […]
For iOS, Accessibility values are one of the building blocks of how Accessibility works on the platform, along with traits, labels, hints, and showing/hiding elements. If you’re familiar with WCAG or web accessibility, accessibility values are the value part of WCAG 4.1.2: Name, Role, Value. Values Not every element in your view will have a […]
Accessibility traits on iOS is the system by which assistive technologies know how to present your interface to your users. The exact experience will vary between assistive technologies, in some cases they may change the intonation of what VoiceOver reads, or add additional options for navigation, sometimes they will disable that assistive technology from accessing […]
When testing your app with VoiceOver or Switch Control, a common test is to ensure you can reach every interactive element on screen. If these assistive technologies can’t focus all of your buttons how will your customers be able to interact fully with your app? Except there are times when hiding buttons from your assistive […]
Attributed accessibility labels are an incredible tool for making some next-level accessible experiences. They let you tell VoiceOver not just what to speak, but how to say it too. Using the accessibilityAttributedLabel property you can provide an NSAttributedString to VoiceOver, much the same way you would provide an NSAttributedString to a label’s attributedText property to […]
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 […]
A few months ago I shared a project I’d been working on for iOS exploring the accessibility API available on that platform. The Android accessibility API is equally large and full featured, and really deserves the same treatment. So here’s A11y Box for Android. A11y Box for Android is an exploration of what is available […]
I was supposed to be attending the 2020 CSUN Assistive Technology conference to present a couple of talks, unfortunately with COVID-19 starting to take hold at that time, I wasn’t able to attend. In lieu of attending I decided to record one of the talks I was scheduled to present on Accessibility in SwiftUI. SwiftUI […]
iOS’ UIAccessibility API is huge. I like to think I know it pretty well, but I’m always being surprised by discovering features I previously had no idea about. Like many things on iOS, the documentation for UIAccessibility is not always complete, even for parts of the API that have been around for years. In an […]
Live Regions are one of my favourite accessibility features on Android. They’re a super simple solution to a common accessibility problem that people with visual impairments can stumble across. Say you have a game app, really any type of game. Your user interacts with the play area, and as they do, their score increases or […]