I am testing the accessibility feature available in the Settings app called "Speak Screen". The help text in the Setting app states that swiping down with two fingers will cause the screen content to be spoken. However, I've been unable to get this feature to work. Every time I try the double finger swipe down, it behaves the same as the single finger swipe down gesture. Usually this manifests as making scroll views bounce.
I've tried toggling the feature on and off, turning off Reachability, and rebooting my phone, but I can't get the speak screen gesture to work. If I access the speak screen feature from the "Speech Controller" button, then the screens content is spoken, as expected, so I know the feature is enabled. It's just the gesture that doesn't work.
Is there something else I need to do to get this gesture to work? I don't want to tell my users to turn this feature on if I can't verify that the gesture will work with my app.
Explore best practices for creating inclusive apps for users of Apple accessibility features and users from diverse backgrounds.
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How to access application’s Trust Store to include the new server certificate
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
VoiceOver reads out all visible content on the screen, which is essential for visually challenged users. However, this raises a privacy concern—what if a user accidentally focuses on sensitive information, like a bank account password, and it gets read aloud?
How can developers prevent VoiceOver from exposing confidential data while still maintaining accessibility? Are there best practices or recommended approaches to handle such scenarios effectively?
I have been working to remediate PDFs for a client. The documents/forms have many tables. When I correctly tag a table, using Foxit Editor Pro, it works beautifully on a PC reading it with NVDA. On Mac using VoiceOver the table isn't accessible. It doesn't matter if I try to read it in Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, or Preview. The reader often says the document is empty, omits column headers, and/or associates the wrong header with the column data.
The documents have essentially the same coding behind them as for the web. Why is it they perform so well on a PC with NVDA, but so poorly with Mac VoiceOver? I am a Quality Assurance Specialist. I review websites apps, and documents for accessibility. Why can't I do my job using only my Mac system?
As a Mac user, it frustrates me that I can't use my preferred system for checking documents to see if they are accessible because VoiceOver doesn't work well. I actually have to recommend to my clients and their customers that they need to use a PC with NVDA or Jaws for these documents to be able to get all the information. Unfortunately, most people aren't able to have, or maintain, both systems. Overall, Mac products are very high quality. This, and other issues with VoiceOver, seems to be a large gap in Apple's offerings and functionality.
I would appreciate a human response to the original email I sent about this on 7/30/2025.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
I have implemented a SwiftUI view containing a grid of TextField elements, where focus moves automatically to the next field upon input. This behavior works well on iOS 16 and 17, maintaining proper focus highlighting when keyboard full access is enabled.
However, in iOS 18 and above, the keyboard full access focus behaves differently. It always stays behind the actual focus state, causing a mismatch between the visually highlighted field and the active text input. This leads to usability issues, especially for users navigating with an external keyboard.
Below is the SwiftUI code for reference:
struct AutoFocusGridTextFieldsView: View {
private let fieldCount: Int
private let columns: Int
@State private var textFields: [String]
@FocusState private var focusedField: Int?
init(fieldCount: Int = 17, columns: Int = 5) {
self.fieldCount = fieldCount
self.columns = columns
_textFields = State(initialValue: Array(repeating: "", count: fieldCount))
}
var body: some View {
let rows = (fieldCount / columns) + (fieldCount % columns == 0 ? 0 : 1)
VStack(spacing: 10) {
ForEach(0..<rows, id: \.self) { row in
HStack(spacing: 10) {
ForEach(0..<columns, id: \.self) { col in
let index = row * columns + col
if index < fieldCount {
TextField("", text: $textFields[index])
.frame(width: 40, height: 40)
.multilineTextAlignment(.center)
.textFieldStyle(RoundedBorderTextFieldStyle())
.focused($focusedField, equals: index)
.onChange(of: textFields[index]) { newValue in
if newValue.count > 1 {
textFields[index] = String(newValue.prefix(1))
}
if !textFields[index].isEmpty {
moveToNextField(from: index)
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
.padding()
.onAppear {
focusedField = 0
}
}
private func moveToNextField(from index: Int) {
if index + 1 < fieldCount {
focusedField = index + 1
}
}
}
struct AutoFocusGridTextFieldsView_Previews: PreviewProvider {
static var previews: some View {
AutoFocusGridTextFieldsView(fieldCount: 10, columns: 5)
}
}
Has anyone else encountered this issue with FocusState in iOS 18?
I really do believe that this is a bug strictly connected to keyboard navigation since I experienced similar problem also on UIKit equivalent of the view.
Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
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
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
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
After 26 IOS update, the colors on my new iPad Pro M4 have become extremely dull almost like those on a very old device. The screen brightness is significantly reduced, and it's now difficult to see UI elements clearly. This is very disappointing considering the device’s high display quality before the update. Please advise if this is a known issue or if there's a fix.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
I’m trying to add the .header accessibility trait to a UISegmentedControl so that VoiceOver recognizes it accordingly. However, setting the trait using the following code doesn’t seem to have any effect:
segmentControl.accessibilityTraits = segmentControl.accessibilityTraits.union(.header)
Even after applying this, VoiceOver doesn’t announce it as a header. Is there any workaround or recommended approach to achieve this?
I can’t screenshot using assistive touch after i install ios 26 beta 2
Hey everyone
I'm working on a health app that's heavily focused on HRV tracking and analysis, and I'm trying to figure out what's actually possible with AirPods Pro 3 from a developer standpoint. The hardware clearly has a much better heart rate sensor than the previous generation, but I'm hitting some walls when it comes to actually accessing the data I need.
So here's the situation I'm dealing with: When I query HealthKit for HRV samples, I'm not seeing anything coming from AirPods Pro 3. The device is obviously capable of tracking heart rate continuously during workouts and listening sessions, and from what I've read about the hardware, it should theoretically be able to capture the inter-beat intervals needed for HRV calculation. But either that data isn't being processed on-device, or it's just not being made available through the standard HealthKit data types that third-party apps can access.
What I'm really after is either direct HRV metrics (like SDNN, which Apple Watch already provides through HKQuantityTypeIdentifierHeartRateVariabilitySDNN) or even better, access to the raw R-R interval data. With R-R intervals, I could calculate RMSSD, pNN50, and other time-domain and frequency-domain HRV metrics that are super valuable for tracking recovery, autonomic nervous system balance, and stress levels. This would be especially useful since a lot of users wear AirPods during activities when they're not wearing their Apple Watch.
Has anyone managed to find a way to pull this data from AirPods Pro 3? Are there any private frameworks or entitlements I should be looking into? Or is this just fundamentally not exposed to developers at the OS level right now?
I've gone through the HealthKit documentation pretty thoroughly and haven't found anything that specifically addresses this, but I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if there are any known workarounds.
I'm also curious if anyone has heard anything from Apple about future plans to expose this data. It seems like a missed opportunity given how capable the hardware is and how much value developers could provide with access to this physiological data. Would love to hear if anyone else is working on similar features or has insights into the technical limitations here.
why did the screen recorder button disappear? It cannot be found anywhere.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
I'm encountering an issue related to BLE device discovery on iOS.
I have a BLE peripheral device that I initially connected to using an iOS device. After this connection, the BLE device's advertised name was programmatically changed by the peripheral. Now, when I try to scan for this device using other iOS devices, it does not appear in the scan results in most apps — including nRF Connect and our own custom BLE app that uses CoreBluetooth.
A few observations:
The device is definitely powered on and advertising (confirmed via Android).
The name change is reflected correctly on Android and on the iOS device that originally connected to it.
Other iOS devices no longer see the device in their scan list.
Bonjour, s'il vous plaît, pourquoi mon compte icloud ne peut pas s'inscrire au programme de développement Apple, je veux vraiment votre aide.
While editing the search text using the external keyboard (with VoiceOver on), if I try to navigate the to List using the keyboard, the focus jumps back to the search field immediately, preventing selection of list items. It's important to note that the voiceover navigation alone without a keyboard works as expected.
It’s as if the List never gains focus—every attempt to move focus lands back on the search field.
The code:
struct ContentView: View {
@State var searchText = ""
let items = ["Apple", "Banana", "Cherry", "Date", "Elderberry", "Fig", "Grape"]
var filteredItems: [String] {
if searchText.isEmpty {
return items
} else {
return items.filter { $0.localizedCaseInsensitiveContains(searchText) }
}
}
var body: some View {
if #available(iOS 16.0, *) {
NavigationStack {
List(filteredItems, id: \.self) { item in
Text(item)
}
.navigationTitle("Fruits")
.searchable(text: $searchText)
}
} else {
NavigationView {
List(filteredItems, id: \.self) { item in
Text(item)
}
.navigationTitle("Fruits")
.searchable(text: $searchText)
}
}
}
}
I am seeing a strange issue where NSObject accessibilityRespondsToUserInteraction returns true on Simulator but false on device.
Checking the same object on simulator with Accessibility inspector I see the object traits as image so why would it return true in that case?
Are there any other way to check the the item might be accessibilityRespondsToUserInteraction OR Clickable beside that property and traits?
(Or is it just another bug)
hi giys,can anyone help me bcouse i cant pair my apple watch series 1 with my iPhone 15
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Hello,
When I listen to title in my app with VoiceOver, it makes a strange sound.
This characters make with Korean+number+Alphabet.
Is this combination makes some strange sound with voice over?
I would like to ask if Apple can fix this issue.
Thank you.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
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!