- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut
- Select VoiceOver
- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Over
- Change the speed to somewhere between 50% and 70%, otherwise you won't be able to understand it
- Go back to your home screen
- Tripple press the Home or Side button to turn VoiceOver on or off
This app shows two approaches of how to use audio to communicate what's on a touchscreen when a person can't see it.
- Open the app in VoiceOver mode
- Explore the interface elements for about 5 minutes
- Do you understand what the app does?
- Do you understand what you can do with it?
An auditory overview is a technique of describing a user interface through audio alone. The aim of an auditory overview is to situate the user, covering the key affordances and actions of a particular screen. Normally a user has to create this overview on their own by exploring and discovering interface controls one-by-one. An auditory overview thus minimizes the time and cognitive effort the user has to make to understand the interface.
To enable the auditory overview experience for PitchBlack:
- Open the PitchBlack project in Xcode
- Go to
ViewController.swift > viewDidLoad() - Uncomment the lind under Step 1:
- Run the app and see how it feels like now
Forms are a particularly difficult UI experience to create and communicate effectively, even when your users have vision at their disposal. When you can't see, it's even harder. Let's imagine a common scenario. A button at the end of a form is disabled until the right parts of a form are filled in. Normally, a button changes visually when it goes from disabled to enabled. How can we communicate that auditorially? I provide one simple example, but I challenge you to think of the edge case where this type of a solution would be a poor choice. What else we could do?
To enable the utton state change for experience PitchBlack:
- Open the PitchBlack project in Xcode
- Go to
ViewController.swift > enableButtonIfPossible() - Uncomment the lind under Step 2:
- Run the app and see how it feels like now
- AppleVis general purpose site that posts app reviews, teaches blind users how to use Apple software where you can talk to real users
- Laura Savino’s Interactive Accessibility Talk at Layers 2015
- John Fox's Doing Well by Doing Good Mobius 2019
- Build Accessible iOS Apps; Podfeet Podcast hosting Donald Burr 2017
- Paul Hudson’s Checklist on making apps more accessible 2018
- [Mobile Accessibility Talk] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn-6Ee7bwRQ&feature=emb_logo) by Chris McMeeking
- Stanford Lecture on Accessibility by Skylar Peterson
- Apple's UI Accessiblity Documentation
This is the accompanying app for AppBuilder 2020, talk UI Mode: Pitch Black. You can find the accompanying slides here.