A Summary of the WWDC25 Group Lab - Accessibility At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for Accessibility. Accessibility Nutrition Labels are a really big step forward for the experience people have on the App Store to find apps that will work for them. How should developers get started with Accessibility Nutrition Labels? A good starting point is to review the Accessibility Nutrition Label evaluation criteria on App Store Connect Help. It's a concise document, roughly 10 pages, and you can approach it section by section after the introduction. Even with prior experience using accessibility features like VoiceOver, the criteria offer valuable insights that might not be immediately apparent. For those newer to accessibility, a good entry point might be one of the visual feature labels, such as Dark Interface, which is a popular and frequently used feature. Which accessibility features can I indicate support for in Accessibility Nutrition Labels? The accessibility features covered include support for assistive technologies like VoiceOver and Voice Control, media enhancements such as captions and audio descriptions, and display accommodations. These display accommodations cover options like larger text, dark interface, differentiating without color alone, sufficient contrast, and reduced motion. With the new Accessibility Nutrition Labels, will app store reviewers validate what we select? The Accessibility Nutrition Label can be edited at any time without requiring a new app submission. However, if an app inaccurately claims feature support, App Review may contact the developer and request an update to the label or the app. Are there any updates to tools for analyzing the accessibility of our apps? Although there aren't new updates this year, continued support for Accessibility Audits is available through Xcode's built-in Accessibility Inspector. XCTest also supports accessibility audits, enabling developers to test app accessibility with every build. These audits analyze aspects like contrast, dynamic type, text clipping, element labels, and more within each view. For a deeper dive, the "Perform accessibility audits for your app" session from WWDC 2023 is a valuable resource. What are accessibility features you wish more people integrated? Accessibility features encompassing user input labels optimized for voice control, keyboard navigation and shortcuts, and dynamic type support could be more used to benefit users. What were some of the biggest accessibility challenges your team encountered while developing Liquid Glass? Apple is known for its innovation and strives to deliver a high-quality experience for everyone. Accessibility is considered a core component of visual design from the outset. For example, the Liquid Glass design inherently supports reduced transparency and increased contrast. As design continues to evolve, user feedback submitted through Feedback Assistant is invaluable. How does Liquid Glass respond to contrast? Especially for text and low contrast environments. Content legibility is a crucial aspect of the Liquid Glass design. It inherently supports accessibility features like reduced transparency and increased contrast. Your feedback during the beta period and beyond is essential to ensuring Liquid Glass provides a great experience within your apps. What are some Apple apps that stand out for their accessibility? Apps like Keynote in the iWork suite offer groundbreaking VoiceOver features to enhance creative productivity for all users. Assistive Access makes core apps such as Messages, Photos, Camera, Phone, and Music more accessible. Podcasts provides transcripts to broaden its reach, and frameworks like SwiftUI ensure that apps built with the latest UI frameworks have excellent built-in accessibility.

Hello, In our app we provide a button that initiates a phone call using tel://. For normal numbers, tapping the button presents the standard iOS confirmation sheet with Call and Cancel. If RTT is enabled on the device, the sheet instead shows three options: Call, Cancel, and RTT Call. However, when dialing a national emergency number, this confirmation dialog does not appear at all — the call is placed immediately, without giving the user the choice between voice or RTT. Is this the expected system behavior for emergency numbers on iOS? 
And if so, how does RTT get applied in the emergency-call flow — is it managed entirely by the OS rather than exposed as a user-facing option? Thanks in advance for clarifying.

I use AttributedString to create a string containing a link. And I set the AttributedString to UILabel. How should I set up the Accessibility feature to make sure that I can keyboard focus on the substring with link and use keyboard operation to open the link I can VoiceOver the whole string and VoiceOver the substring with link to open the link Thanks a lot.

I’m trying to enroll in the Apple Developer Program as an individual. I’ve gone through the steps on the website and started the purchase process. However, after a couple of days when I return to the site, it doesn’t remember my progress — I have to start the enrollment from scratch every time. Is this expected behavior? Am I missing a step to save my progress or complete the enrollment properly? Any help or guidance would be appreciated. Thank you!

Hi everybody, I'm trying to build a QR-Code Scanner and Generator App for IOS. Whenever I try to implement the camera the app crashes with this comment: This app has crashed because it attempted to access privacy-sensitive data without a usage description. The app's Info.plist must contain an NSCameraUsageDescription key with a string value explaining to the user how the app uses this data. I tried to reduce the app to the minimum of nothing but camera with the same result. Any ideas? Tank you and best Regards Horst Schippers

Hi! I'm working on an application where I'd like VoiceOver to give each element of a tab bar the "Tab" trait. I'm testing this using the Accessibility Inspector. Essentially, I'd like to replicate the behavior of how Safari identifies each of its tabs as a "Tab" (I've attached a photo below). How exactly is this accomplished? I've tried using the .isTabBar trait to designate the child objects as "Tabs", but this doesn't seem to be working and I've struggled to find documentation about this. For additional context, these child items are Buttons, and I would like to have the .isButton trait essentially replaced by something like an .isTab trait. Not sure if this is actually possible or not, but curious how the Accessibility Inspector recognizes this in Safari.

after the 26.3 beta update, my mouse has been having major problems with transparency, have to keep going to reset colors in display, but it doesn't hold, anyone else?

I need to direct text-to-speech generated audio from my app simultaneously to a bluetooth speaker device AND to the internal iPad speaker. The app uses AVSpeechSynthesizer and several third party speech engines. How best to do this? I noticed the outputChannels property on AVSpeechSynthesizer...are there any examples of how to use this?

In the app I'm working on, I have a SwiftUI View embedded in a UIKit Storyboard. The SwiftUI View holds a menu with a list of payment tools, and the ForEach loop looks like this: ForEach(self.paymentToolsVM.paymentToolsItems, id: \.self) { paymentTool in Button { navigationCallback(paymentTool.segueID) } label: { PaymentToolsRow(paymentToolName: paymentTool.title, imageName: paymentTool.imageName) .accessibilityElement() .accessibilityIdentifier("Billing_\(paymentTool.title.replacingOccurrences(of: " ", with: ""))") } if paymentTool != self.paymentToolsVM.paymentToolsItems.last { Divider() } } So you can see the accessibility ID is there, and it shows up properly when I open up Accessibility Inspector with the simulator, but the testing script isn't picking up on it, and it doesn't show up when the view is inspected in Appium. I have other SwiftUI views embedded in the UIKit view, and the script picks up the buttons on those, so I'm not sure what's different about this one. If it helps, the script is written in Java with the BDD framework. I can try to get the relevant part of the script if anyone thinks that would be helpful. Otherwise, is there anything else I can try?

I want to open a developer account, but it is not personal, but rather a company, and I have an existing company, and I have DUNS, and I have a website that has been made, and everything is ready, and an official email, but when the application is made at Apple, he sends to my email that he wants a public website for people, and it will be in the name of the organization, and all of these matters have been resolved. Why do they not respond to us?

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?

Accessibility Voiceover is not treating navigation bar left button as first focused element. If we navigate from A->B then the focus is going to first element inside the B view not to the back button or B view's navigation title. If we post accessibility notification, in onAppear of B, focus is not shifting. but it will read back button first, and then read the B view's content item. it does't focus to back button in swiftUI. how should I do? if I want to focus on the navigation item back button or navigation title. my understanding is the system prioritizes the first focusable element in the view hierarchy. but The navigation bar (including the close button and title) is managed separately by the system. It is not part of the main view hierarchy, so it does not automatically receive focus unless explicitly set. if my thoughts are right, it seems a little strange. Why did you design it this way? Can you tell me your thinking? Thanks

Hi, I’ve been reviewing the Apple Wallet provisioning documentation (Getting Started with Apple Pay In-App Provisioning_ Verification_Security_Wallet Extensions )and had a few questions regarding the color path recommendation (Green, Yellow, Orange, Red) returned during the in-app provisioning flow: Who determines the color path—is it Apple directly, the Payment Network Operator (PNO), or both? What criteria are used to determine the color path (e.g., device info, Apple ID reputation, past provisioning attempts)? At what point in the provisioning flow is the color path recommendation received? Is it included in the response after the PKAddPaymentPassRequest is submitted? Is it accessible through any specific property or callback in the delegate method? Additionally, for Orange Path with Reason Code 0G, I understand that in-app verification is not allowed and must be handled via tenured channels (e.g., SMS/email). Can you confirm if this logic still applies for requests initiated from within the issuer's iOS app? Would appreciate any clarification or pointers to related documentation.

Hi, On iOS, I'd like to mark views that are inside a LazyVStack as headers for VoiceOver (make them appear in the headings rotor). In a VStack, you just have add .accessibilityAddTraits(.isHeader) to your header view. However, if your view is in a LazyVStack, that won't work if the view is not visible. As its name implies, LazyVStack is lazy so that makes sense. There is very little information online about system rotors, but it seems you are supposed to use .accessibilityRotor() with the headings system rotor (.accessibilityRotor(.headings)) outside of the LazyVStack. Something like the following. .accessibilityRotor(.headings) { ForEach(entries) { entry in // entry.id must be the same as the id of the SwiftUI view it is about AccessibilityRotorEntry(entry.name, id: entry.id) } } It kinds of work, but only kind of. When using .accessibilityAddTraits(.isHeader) in a VStack, the view is in the headings rotor as soon as you change screen. However, when using .accessibilityRotor(.headings), the headers (headings?) are not in the headings rotor at the time the screen appears. You have to move the accessibility focus inside the screen before your headers show up. I'm a beginner in regards to VoiceOver, so I don't know how a blind user used to VoiceOver would perceive this, but it feels to me that having to move the focus before the headers are in the headings rotor would mean some users would miss them. So my question is: is there a way to have headers inside a LazyVStack (and are not necessarily visible at first) to be in the headings rotor as soon as the screen appears? (be it using .accessibilityRotor(.headings) or anything else) The "SwiftUI Accessibility: Beyond the basics" talk from WWDC 2021 mentions custom rotors, not system rotors, but that should be close enough. It mentions that for accessibilityRotor to work properly it has to be applied on an accessibility container, so just in case I tried to move my .accessibilityRotor(.headings) to multiple places, with and without the accessibilityElement(children: .contain) modifier, but that did not seem to change the behavior (and I could not understand why accessibilityRotor could not automatically make the view it is applied on an accessibility container if needed). Also, a related question: when using .accessibilityRotor(.headings) on a screen, is it fine to mix uses of .accessibilityRotor(.headings) and .accessibilityRotor(.headings)? In a screen with multiple type of contents (something like ScrollView { VStack { MyHeader(); LazyVStack { /* some content */ }; LazyVStack { /* something else */ } } }), having to declare all headers in one place would make code reusability harder. Thanks

In VoiceOver, when using Group Navigation style, the cursor first focuses on the semantic group. To navigate inside the group, a two-finger swipe (left or right) can be used. This behavior works for default containers like the Navigation Bar, Tab Bar, and Tool Bar. How can I achieve the same behavior for a custom view? I tried setting accessibilityContainerType = .semanticGroup, but it only works for Mac Catalyst. Is there an equivalent approach for iOS?

Since the last bet upgrade for iPad to 26.3 labels have disappeared. Going into system/accessibility the toggle setting for labels makes no difference whether on or off. labels are permanently not there/missing.

Please excuse me if this is obvious. I'm new to Apple development. Is there a SwiftUI Accessibility Inspector? I run the standard one, in Xcode 26b3, and it shows me warnings for things that I didn't create in SwiftUI. I presume that "SwiftUI" is primarily implemented using macros and that these things are either generated or boilerplate lower-level things. But if so, then why would they trip Accessibility Inspector warnings? Is there something I can do from SwiftUI to clear them? Or... is there a demangler somewhere that will translate from these names into something this human might recognize? I'm targeting macos, btw, if that makes any difference.

We recently adopted our app to Liquid Glass and received a complaint from a visually impaired user that VoiceOver does not read out the number of unread items in the tab bar anymore. We checked and it seems that before iOS 26/Liquid Glass, setting a tab bar item's badgeValue property also set an appropriate text to its accessibilityValue property (something like "3 items"). But with Liquid Glass tab bars, this does not seem to be the case anymore. We fixed this by providing our own accessibility value, but we're wondering whether this change was a deliberate choice or simply a bug? If this new behavior is considered a bug, I would post a bug report.

Hi, I'm trying to fix tvOS view for VoiceOver accessibility feature: TabView { // 5 tabs Text(title) Button(play) ScrollView { // Live LazyHStack { 200 items } } ScrollView { // Continue watching LazyHStack { 500 items } } } When the view shows up VoiceOver reads: "Home tab 1 of 5, Item 2" - not sure why it reads Item 2 of the first cell in scroll view, maybe beacause it just got loaded by LazyHStack. VocieOver should only read "Home tab 1 of 5" When moving focus to scroll view it reads: "Live, Item 1" and after slight delay "Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4" When moving focus to second item it reads: "Item 2" and after slight delay "Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4" When moving focus to third item it reads: "Item 3" and after slight delay "Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4" It should be just reading what is focused, idealy just "Live, Item 1, 1 of 200" then after moving focus on item 2 "Item 2, 2 of 200" this time without the word "Live" because we are on the same scroll view (the same horizontal list) Currently the app is unusable, we have visually impaired testers and this rotor reading everything on the screen is totaly confusing, because users don't know where they are and what is actually focused. This is a video streaming app and we are streaming all the time, even on home page in background, binge plays one item after another, usually there is never ending Live stream playing, user can switch TV channel, but we continue to play. Voice over should only read what's focused after user interaction. Original Apple TV app does not do that, so it cannot be caused by some verbose accessibility settings. It reads correctly only focused item in scrolling lists. How do I disable reading content that is not focused? I tried: .accessibilityLabel(isFocused ? title : "") .accessibilityHidden(!isFocused) .accessibilityHidden(true) - tried on various levels in view hierarchy .accessiblityElement(children: .ignore) - even focused item is not read back by voice over .accessiblityElement(children: .ignore) - even focused item is not read back by voice over .accessiblityElement(children: .contain) - tried on various levels in view hierarchy .accessiblityElement(children: .combine) - tried on various levels in view hierarchy .accessibilityAddTraits(.isHeader) - tried on various levels in view hierarchy .accessibilityRemoveTraits(.isHeader) - tried on various levels in view hierarchy // the last 2 was basically an attempt to hack it .accessibilityRotor("", ranges []) - another hack that I tried on ScrollView, LazyHStack, also on top level view. 50+ other attempts at configuring accessibility tags attached to views. I have seen all the accessibility videos, tried all sample code projects, I haven't found a solution anywhere, internet search didn't find anything, AI didn't help as it can only provide code that someone else wrote before. Any idea how to fix this? Thanks.

I have a product for designing particle emitters, which I suspect may be of limited interest to people with limited vision. I'd still like to ensure I'm doing a good job with VoiceOver mode. There's a related, simplified sample online, if you want to look at the code As you can see from the picture below, a large part of the interface mimics Xcode's particle editor, with many value entry controls that combine up/down buttons with a tappable label. Tapping the label goes into edit mode. Apart from changing how labels are stepped through in voiceover in my app, how should I handle these stepper buttons? Is this a good place to use a Custom Rotor?