Question

I have a bunch of buttons on the screen which are positioned intuitively visually but are not read in an intuitive order by VoiceOver. This is because certain buttons like Up and Down are placed above and below each other. However, voiceover starts reading from Left to Right, from Top to Bottom, it seems.

This results in voiceover reading the button to the right of “Up” after “Up”, instead of reading “Down” immediately afterward.

How do I force voiceover to read the button that I want to read? I should mention that I’m using the swipe-to-cycle-through-elements feature on voiceover.

All my buttons are subclassed versions of UIView and UIButton. Here’s an example of a button initiator I use. Ignore the pixel count – I know that’s bad form but I’m in a pinch at the moment:

UIButton* createSpecialButton(CGRect frame, 
                                 NSString* imageName, 
                                 NSString* activeImageName,
                                 id target,
                                 SEL obClickHandler) 
{
    UIButton* b = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
    [b setImage:[GlobalHelper nonCachedImage:imageName ofType:@"png"] 
       forState:UIControlStateNormal];
    [b setImage:[GlobalHelper nonCachedImage:activeImageName ofType:@"png"] 
       forState:UIControlStateHighlighted];
    [b addTarget:target action:obClickHandler forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];    
    b.frame= frame;
    return b;
}


- (UIButton *) createSendButton {
    CGFloat yMarker = 295;

    UIButton* b = createSpecialButton(CGRectMake(160, yMarker, 70, 45),
                                          @"Share_Btn",
                                          @"Share_Selected_Btn",
                                          self,
                                          @selector(sendAction));
    b.accessibilityHint = @"Send it!";
    b.accessibilityLabel = @"Stuff for voiceover to be added";
    [self.view addSubview:b];

    return b;
}

Answer 1

The easiest answer to this lies in creating a UIView subclass that contains your buttons, and responds differently to the accessibility calls from the system. These important calls are:

-(NSInteger)accessibilityElementCount
-(id)accessibilityElementAtIndex:
-(NSInteger)indexOfAccessibilityElement:

I’ve seen a few of these questions, and answered one before, but I’ve not seen a generic example of how to reorder the VoiceOver focus. So here is an example of how to create a UIView subclass that exposes its accessible subviews to VoiceOver by tag.

AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
@interface AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag : UIView
@end

AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag.m

#import "AccessibilityDirectional.h"
@implementation AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag {
    NSMutableArray *_accessibilityElements;
}
    //Lazy loading accessor, avoids instantiating in initWithCoder, initWithFrame, or init.
-(NSMutableArray *)accessibilityElements{
    if (!_accessibilityElements){
        _accessibilityElements = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    }
    return _accessibilityElements;
}
// Required accessibility methods...
-(BOOL)isAccessibilityElement{
    return NO;
}
-(NSInteger)accessibilityElementCount{
    return [self accessibilityElements].count;
}
-(id)accessibilityElementAtIndex:(NSInteger)index{
    return [[self accessibilityElements] objectAtIndex:index];
}
-(NSInteger)indexOfAccessibilityElement:(id)element{
    return [[self accessibilityElements] indexOfObject:element];
}
// Handle added and removed subviews...
-(void)didAddSubview:(UIView *)subview{
    [super didAddSubview:subview];
    if ([subview isAccessibilityElement]){
        // if the new subview is an accessibility element add it to the array and then sort the array.
        NSMutableArray *accessibilityElements = [self accessibilityElements];
        [accessibilityElements addObject:subview];
        [accessibilityElements sortUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id obj1, id obj2){
            // Here we'll sort using the tag, but really any sort is possible.
            NSInteger one = [(UIView *)obj1 tag];
            NSInteger two = [(UIView *)obj2 tag];
            if (one < two) return NSOrderedAscending;
            if (one > two) return NSOrderedDescending;
            return NSOrderedSame;
        }];
    }
}
-(void)willRemoveSubview:(UIView *)subview{
    [super willRemoveSubview:subview];
    // Clean up the array. No check since removeObject: is a safe call.
    [[self accessibilityElements] removeObject:subview];
}
@end

Now simply enclose your buttons in an instance of this view, and set the tag property on your buttons to be essentially the focus order.