Is there a way to extract the Accessibility Tree directly from the browser? Since Chrome provides an API for it, can we use that to generate a dump of the Accessibility Tree?
Explore best practices for creating inclusive apps for users of Apple accessibility features and users from diverse backgrounds.
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Our company enrolled in the Apple Developer Program as an organization in July 2024. Everything was fine for several months, but in early January 2025, our developer noticed that the certificates were missing. When we logged into our developer account, we were shocked to see a page prompting us to “Enroll Today”—as if we had never joined in the first place.
Clicking the enrollment button led us to an error page stating we cannot enroll.
We immediately reached out to Apple Developer Support via email, but despite multiple attempts, we received no response. Strangely, our apps remain live on the App Store, App Store Connect functions as usual, and we continue receiving payments every month. However, we are completely blocked from developing and releasing updates.
Today, I managed to reach Apple by phone. After being transferred to a senior representative, I was told they couldn’t tell me why this was happening. They only confirmed that a request had been made and that I should “wait.” That’s it—no explanation, no timeline, nothing. While it’s somewhat reassuring that they acknowledge the issue, I’ve already seen other developers with the same problem go unanswered for months.
My suspicion? This account might be linked to an individual developer account from way back in 2015 when Apple’s registration process was far less strict. Could that be the issue? No idea—because Apple won’t say a word.
Meanwhile, both of our apps have been exposed to several bugs, and customers are waiting for updates. If there’s still no response from Apple, I have no choice but to register a new account—purely to continue supporting our users.
CASE ID: 102508598957
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
I’d love to see Apple implement a Bionic Reading feature as a system-wide accessibility option. This type of reading aid highlights the first part of each word in bold to help guide the eyes and improve comprehension.
It’s been shown to be especially helpful for people with ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodivergent needs. Having a toggle in Settings > Accessibility would be life-changing.
Ideally, it could be:
• Enabled system-wide, or per-app
• Allow customization of how much of the word is bolded
• Available in Safari, Messages, Books, News, etc.
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.
When my macOS Cocoa app displays a modal alert with beginSheetModal(for:completionHandler:), VoiceOver sometimes seems to focus on an "illegal" upper level, where any attempts at navigation will give the unhelpful response "Alert, dialog", until you "drill down" with VO + shift + down or switch apps. After that, things will work as expected.
Is this a known bug? Does it happen to anybody else, or am I doing something wrong?
Hello,
I'm observing a persistent and frustrating issue with an accessibility feature called Guided Access that seems to affect many users across different devices and iOS versions.
Problem
The triple-click gesture (side or home button) to activate Guided Access intermittently stops working after the device has been in normal use for a few days (typically 2-7 days) without a restart.
I have done some debugging for Apple in FB16094026 but received no updates after 6 months. So I'm posting here in the hope that this will be solved sooner. A core accessibility feature shouldn't require daily device restarts to function reliably.
Details:
Guided Access is correctly enabled in Settings > Accessibility.
Initially, the triple-click works perfectly.
After a period of normal device use (2-7 days), the triple-click no longer triggers Guided Access in any app.
Restarting the device temporarily resolves the issue, and Guided Access triple-click works again immediately after a reboot. However, the problem recurs after continued use.
Simply toggling the Guided Access setting on/off does NOT fix it.
Additional observation: Even trying to select Guided Access manually via the Accessibility Shortcut menu (if multiple shortcuts are enabled) sometimes fails to launch the feature when in this state.
Affected:
iPhones and iPads
Observed on iOS/iPadOS 16, 17, and now 18, indicating it's a long-standing bug.
Impact:
Guided Access is a crucial accessibility feature for many users (for focus, special needs, parental controls, etc.). Its unreliable activation significantly disrupts daily workflows and reliance on this function. This issue appears to be widespread, with many reports across forums like Apple Support Communities and Reddit.
For example, this post received over 1k upvotes.
To see more examples please refer to FB16094026.
Could Apple please investigate this bug urgently? Thanks.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
I want to understand which component types are intended to have an associated hint text, haptic feedback, or earcon associated with it for VoiceOver screen reader users. Is there a list somewhere or a HIG guideline for which transition types should have a sound?
Some transitions in Apple apps generally include different beep sounds, such as
opening a new screen
screen dimming
when a VoiceOver user swipes from the header / navbar to the body
a scraping sound when swiping up or down a page.
the beginning or end of the body section
in Calculator when swiping from one row to the next.
opening a pop up menu
I would also appreciate any direction on what code strings are associated with these sounds and how custom components can capture these sounds or haptics or hints where it is expected? On the other hand, I don't want to get that info and then dictate that every component needs a specific beep type since these sounds appear to be used for specific purposes.
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
I'm facing a bizarre issue with the Apple's Accessibility APIs. I am registering an AXObserver that listens for, among other things, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification. For many new users, the kAXSelectTextChangedNotification is not triggered, even though they have enabled Accessibility permission for the app. Other notifications are getting through (kAXWindowMovedNotification, kAXWindowResizedNotification, kAXValueChangedNotification etc - full list here), just not the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification!
We've found that we can reproduce the error by removing accessibility permission for the app and rebooting our computers. After restarting and reenabling accessibility permissions, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification was not received, even though other notifications were fine.
Strangely, the issue can be resolved by launching Apple's Accessibility Inspector app on an impacted computer. Once the Accessibility Inspector is loaded, the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotifications start coming through as expected. This implies to me that either:
We are missing some needed setup when starting the observers. Accessibility Inspector gets it right, thus ‘starting’ the system properly.
Accessibility Inspector is using some Apple private APIs that we don’t have access to.
Things I’ve tried:
I've tried subscribing the AXSelectedTextChangedNotification to different AXUIElements, including the SystemWide element, the Application element, and children elements from the AXApplication. None of these received the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification, until Accessibility Inspector is booted up. No surprises here, as Apple's documentation confirms that you should add the notification to the root Application AXUIElement if you want to receive notifications for all its children.
I had a theory that the issue might be due to my code calling AXUIElementCreateApplication multiple times, possibly creating multiple "Applications" in Apple's Accessibility implementation. If that’s the case, the notifications might be sent to the wrong application AXUIElement. However, refactoring my code to only call AXUIElementCreateApplication once didn't resolve the issue.
I thought the issue may be caused by subscribing the AXSelectedTextChangedNotification on the high-level application element (at odds with Apple's documentation). I've tried traversing the child AXUIElements until we find one with the kAXSelectedTextAttribute and then subscribing to that. This did not resolve the issue. I don’t think it's the correct path to continue exploring, given that the notifications are received correctly after AccessibilityInspector is launched.
There is one exception to the above: if I add the kSelectedTextChangedNotification listener to a specific text field AXUIElement, I do receive the notification on that text field. However, this is not practical; I need a solution that will work for all text fields within an app. The Accessibility Inspector appears to be doing something that causes the selected-text-changed notifications to be correctly passed up to the high-level application AXUIElement.
Another thought is that I could traverse the entire Accessibility hierarchy and add listeners to every subview that has the kAXSelectedTextAttribute. However, I don’t like this long-term solution. It will be slow and incomplete: new elements get added and removed frequently. I just want the kAXSelectedTextChangedNotification to be received by the high-level Application AXUIElement, which the documentation suggests it should be. I also have evidence that this can work, since notifications start coming through after Accessibility Inspector is launched. It’s just a matter of discovering how to replicate whatever Accessibility Inspector is doing.
An interesting wrinkle: I implemented the 'traverse' strategy above, but was surprised by how few elements were in the hierarchy. Most apps only go down ~2-3 levels, which didn't seem right to me. Perhaps the Accessibility tree isn't fully initialized? I tried adding a 5-second delay to allow more initialization time, but it didn't change anything.
Does anyone have any ideas? Here's our file.
ar quicklook suddenly is grayed out on iphone 15 pro, I bought the phone new recently ot was working great, 2 days ago updated to ios 18.1.4, ar mode kept opening but i started getting a move iphone over surface message and the object wouldn’t detect surfaces correctly, updated to ios 18.5, now when i open quicklook modesl ar is completely greyed out,
can someone help me fix or detect the issue
thank you
Hey everyone!
I am developing a screen time limit app to help people spend less time in distracting apps.
It works this way: people choose unhealthy apps for them and opposite productivity apps. In the app you can exchange time spent on healthy habits to scroll or use other distracting apps.
This idea was loved by social media, and the app already has 100k followers on social media without even being launched yet.
So I am waiting just for one feature permission from Apple, and they have not given me any answer since I applied 3 weeks ago.
There are a lot of similar apps on the market, and this feature exists in other screen time limit apps.
Why is app blocking permission needed?
Time Exchange Functionality:
Users independently select which apps are productive and which are distracting for them.
The system blocks the "negative" apps until the user accumulates enough time in the "positive" ones. This encourages healthy device usage.
Full User Control:
All apps to be blocked are manually selected by the user in the settings.
The extension does not impose any restrictions without explicit permission.
Transparency and Security:
Blocking happens locally, with no data collected about app usage.
We adhere to Apple’s privacy policy.
Compliance with App Store Guidelines:
We understand that app blocking is a sensitive feature, but in our case it:
Is used for the benefit of the user (digital detox, productivity improvement).
Does not interfere with system processes or other developers’ apps.
Does not misuse access to APIs.
My question to the forum is:
Did you have similar problems, and how did you resolve them?
Are there any ways to speed up the process or contact someone from the approval team directly?
Should I give up and release it on Android?
I am very disappointed and frustrated. Hope to get some useful tips.
Thank you very much!
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
I have more than 1000 notes classified in parent/child folders up to 5 levels. From the 5th level of files I can no longer share the note. The note is not shared. It is that of the parent file that is shared.
Thank you very much
Good to you
Christophe
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Even though navigationBarBackButtonHidden is set, the back button appears when you swipe slightly.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
We have an iOS App built in .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI).
This is a web view App.
We wish to integrate APP Clips into this App.
But we are unable to do it, due to less available resources online on such implementation.
We do not wish to share code between .NET MAUI App and App clips.
We understand it is not possible to add APP Clips without a parent swift/Xcode app.
As an alternative solution we were thinking to Create a new APP in APP Store Connect using XCode/swift and integrate app clips to it.
This parent app when downloaded by users will only redirect users to our MAIN .NET MAUI app to app store connect.
We need to know if such apps will be approved by APPSTORE Connect?
Please guide us on this.
Also please do let us know if you have any other solution to integrate App clips to a .NET MAUI App
i have updated to the ipados 26 and my pointer is still the circle one and not the arrow cursor
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Yesterday I installed iOS 26 on my iPhone as a beta tester. At first there was no problem, but during the afternoon I noticed that neither FaceTime nor IMessage worked... I tried to go through the settings as described by Apple Support, but my phone number would not activate. Sometimes I was even asked to activate iCloud. I always get a REG-RESP message.
Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be?
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
My game app is text-based interactive fiction, containing no audio/video content, making captions unnecessary. Our game is completely accessible to deaf users.
Despite this, in the Accessibility Nutrition Label, I'm only able to leave the "Captions" box checked or unchecked. Leaving it unchecked would leave deaf players with the wrong impression that they can't enjoy our game. Leaving it checked would imply that we do have A/V content with captions included.
In the WWDC video on this, https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/224/ the video says:
After we completed common tasks, we realized our app doesn’t have any video or audio only content. In this case, we aren’t going to indicate that Landmarks supports Captions. That's okay. This accurately describes the features that people will expect to be available while using the app.
Maybe that's "OK," but I wish the form allowed me to say "This app doesn't contain audio/video content."
The AVSpeechSynthesizer on some iOS 18 device has a bug that it will read always read Chinese of:
AVSpeechUtterance(string: "中文") // Any Chinese Content
in the dialect specified by:
Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content > Voices > Chinese > Spoken Language
instead of the dialect that I specified in AVSpeechUtterance.voice:
AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "zh-HK") // Cantonese
AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "zh-TW") // Mandarin
However, setting Chinese dialect of AVSpeechSynthesisVoice by "zh-HK" or "zh-TW" has been working on iOS 17 and below.
My app has a feature that requires reading sentences in Mandarin followed by Cantonese, i.e., both dialects is needed every time. Therefore, setting the dialect in Spoken Language of Settings is not a workaround to make my app to function correctly in iOS 18.
Further to the above, I've also discovered that, if iOS 18 (in my case, 18.5 is tested) is freshly installed (not upgrading from iOS 17 or below, nor restoring backup after fresh installation of iOS 18), the bug above will not happen.
However, if it was an upgrade from iOS 17 or below, or backup is restored (in my case, I freshly installed iOS 18.5 on a new iPhone and then restored a backup from another iPhone on iOS 16.2), the bug above happens.
This bug puzzled me because I need both dialect of Chinese to be read aloud one by one, but as reported by many users, on most iOS 18 devices (since a fresh installation of latest iOS without upgrading or restoring is uncommon nowadays), my app will read Cantonese two times or Mandarin two times (depending on Spoken Language in Settings). It is the iOS 18 bug which made my app unable to perform the expected behavior.
Would Apple developers look into this and advise if there are any possible workaround within the code of app to overcome this bug, or please fix this bug with an iOS 18 update. Thank you.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Hey everyone,
I've been thinking about a truly innovative way to enhance iPhone battery life and user convenience, drawing inspiration from kinetic energy harvesting. What if we could have a clock display on the main iPhone screen that's powered purely by user motion, and activates only when you look at it, without touching your main battery?
The Core Idea
Imagine this:
Kinetic Energy Harvesting: Your iPhone would have a tiny, integrated kinetic energy generator. This generator would capture the energy from your everyday movements – walking, picking up the phone, putting it in your pocket.
Independent Power Source: This harvested energy would be stored in a small, dedicated capacitor or micro-battery, completely separate from your iPhone's main battery.
Acelerometer-Activated Display: Instead of relying on power-hungry facial recognition, the phone's accelerometer (a very low-power sensor) would detect specific "raise to wake" or "tap to look" gestures.
On-Demand, Ultra-Low Power Clock: Only when the accelerometer detects one of these specific gestures would the stored kinetic energy be used to illuminate just the necessary pixels on the main OLED/AMOLED screen to display the time. The rest of the screen stays completely black (consuming no power on OLED).
Automatic Shut-Off: As soon as the gesture ends or the phone is put down, the clock display would turn off, conserving the limited harvested energy.
Why This Matters
This isn't just a cool gimmick; it offers significant benefits:
True Battery Independence: Get the time at a glance, anytime, without touching your main battery or even the power button. This means more main battery life for apps, calls, and everything else.
Ultimate Convenience: A "magical" interaction – just pick up your phone, and the time instantly appears. No taps, no button presses.
Sustainable & Innovative: Showcases practical "energy harvesting" in a consumer device, pushing boundaries for self-sufficient tech.
Extreme Energy Efficiency: By using a low-power accelerometer as the trigger and only lighting a few pixels on demand, the system is designed for minimal power draw, making kinetic power a viable source.
This concept combines existing low-power sensing (accelerometer), efficient display technology (OLED/AMOLED's true blacks), and cutting-edge energy harvesting, creating a genuinely innovative user experience.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General