Siri has a few snarky things to say about Apple’s new event on September 9th as suggested by their invitations. Below are two pictures with descriptions of some things that Siri said.

“Give us a hint.”, Siri, “The only hint I can give you right now is a hint of lime. And that there’s a big announcement on September 9th.” “Give us a hint.” Siri, “You’ll have to wait until September 9th. I bet you one of those kids who snuck downstairs to open presents early, Weren’t you?”

As I am sure you can tell, This post in more about the accessibility of developing apps for iOS. While this post may be quite technical, I think that all users can learn from what is said here.

While building an app, I found out that some of the code I was using was what is called depreciated by Apple. This means that the code has been replaced with something newer and hopefully cooler, and this is the case with adding a search bar to an app. The trouble is, all of the tutorials I have found on how to do this are giving bad information, and the developers that use these tutorials are making apps with inaccessible search result tables. Read on if you are still interested in learning why this is, and how to fix it.

What is the problem?

When a developer makes a search results table from what is called a UISearchController they are given two options. To make the current table display search results, or have another table display the search results. Which one sounds the easiest.

If you said the first where the table that already presents data acts as the search results table view would be the easiest then you would be correct, but VoiceOver sees the search Bar as being in focus and ignores the table in the background, which does not allow for VoiceOver users to check view website and see search results. visual users not using VoiceOver have no issue here, but VoiceOver will not be able to give the user feedback or allow the person to select a result.

What is the solution?

The solution is option 2 for adding search. Simply add another table view controller that mirrors your table that is to be searched and tell the UISearchController that that table controller is the one responsible for displaying search results. You will have to add methods for handling row selection and displaying of data from the presenting table, but you are already doing this to display your current data.

Conclusion

While this may take a few extra steps of work while building your app it will be worth it to make sure your customers can search through your data as any other iOS user would. I would advise developers to use option 2.

The Health app included in iOS 8 has allowed iOS users to track many different aspects of their health including calorie intake, distance walked, height weight, allergies, medications and more. Lets take a look at how blind and low vision users can use these features of iOS.

The Health App

The Health app is Apple’s one stop information shop for health information on your iPhone. It stores all information gathered by other apps, so that you or your doctor view website can get to the information quickly. You can also set up your medical ID here that can be used from your lock screen in case of emergency.

The health app is fully accessible, but there is a limited amount of information that can be entered here. This app is mainly used for learning information gathered from other apps.

The Activity App

The activity app is an app that appears on your iPhone after you’ve used it for the first time on your Apple Watch. Through this app, you can find out how much you stood, walked, and exercised that day and then you can check your stats for the week as well.

Again, This app is accessible, but requires an Apple Watch to work. You set up a weekly move goal, and it will keep track of how often you meet that goal each day. There are even achievements!

Argus

Argus is an app that also works with the Apple Watch, and with many other accessories. Argus is similar to the Health app, but it can also be installed and used on more than just iOS devices. You can login and it will save your health data to the internet. I believe this is what is used most on Android Devices.

Argus has limited accessibility, but has many features that will work with VoiceOver.

MotionX 24/7: Sleeptracker, Sleep Cycle Alarm, Snore, Apnea, Heart Rate Monitor, Weight Loss, Activity Tracker

MotionX created an app that will keep track of your sleep patterns, detect your heart rate through the iPhone camera, and it will also detect your steps and let you set goals.

When using the app last year, I found it to have great performance in how it worked, but very low usability for VoiceOver users. several buttons did not work properly.

Nike Move

Nike made a neat game app for fitness uses called Nike Move. This app works with Game Center to let users gain what are called Nike Fuel Points. This point system is measured as you move throughout the day, and the more you get the higher the points you get for that day. From what I can remember, it even kept up with how many you had by the end of the week.

While this app is neat, and the game center integration is awesome, I seem to remember that it had several accessibility issues concerning VoiceOver support.

Other Apps

As you can see, there are many great apps for tracking health information on the iPhone. There are so many now that I would not be able to talk about them all. Please write a comment If you use an app that has not been discussed.

As time goes by, we will write new stories related to health tracking apps as these apps have become an important part of using any smart device such as the iPhone.

On May 1, 2015, Clara Van Gerven of the National Federation of the Blind posted a blog post discussing her findings after using VoiceOver for 40 days. Ms. Van Gerven is fully sighted, but works alongside other blind assistive technology specialists. In the post, Ms. Van Gerven states many problems that she has found with VoiceOver, and of the many struggles she has faced. I will not quote the article here, but you can click/tap/enter on the title, and you will be directed to this post at the National Federation of the blind.

The Bluetooth Keyboard.

The author of this posts states that it is difficult to type in iOS with VoiceOver, and a person should just rush out and obtain a bluetooth keyboard to properly use their device. This is really not the case. The iPhone and iPad have several amazing typing modes such as Standard typing, Touch Typing,, and Direct Touch Typing. 

• Standard Typing lets the user type in a familiar way to finding buttons on the screen. all a user has to do is to find the key they want, and pick up their finger. Once they list their finger they must simply double tap anywhere on the screen to type that letter. As long as the person an easily do a double tap, then typing is feasible. 
• Touch Typing lets the user find the key and then simply lift their finger. Lifting that finger will instantly place the desired letter in the document or edit field. This mode does require more precision, as it means that if you pick up your finger for even a second, you will type a letter.
• Direct Touch Typing is more like typing with VoiceOver off. As you tap a letter it will type that letter on the screen. This also works well for low to no vision users if they use autocorrect or predictive text often.

As a trainer of the blind, I find that all of my students have found ease with one of these typing methods or even with two, and they will even switch between them as situations change. The author of this blog post goes as far as to say that it is a pain for even the experts to type using the on screen keyboard while using VoiceOver, and this is simply just not the case. Very few iOS users have decided to switch from using the on screen keyboard to a bluetooth keyboard for their main everyday iOS use, and who wants to carry around a bulky keyboard just to use a shiny new smartphone anyways!

Navigating apps

The author of this post states that navigating apps is doable with the standard VoiceOver gestures if the app is accessible, but that it requires the user to remember the layout of the app and to learn context clues in speech to carry out tasks. The truth is that she is correct, however this is the same approach that a person must use while using a computer with JAWS., and just like with JAWS, things can change over time, and an iOS user must learn to adapt to these changes. Change is the nature of technology and software.

VoiceOver and the Web

The net topic the author discusses next is the web, which means using VoiceOver in Safari. While the author makes several valid points about inaccessibility with the web and VoiceOver and Safari, it is worth noting that iOS 8 as a whole is terribly buggy even to sighted users browsing the web. There are problems with the back button and forward button doing what they are supposed to do in iOS 8. Many are calling iOS 8 the, “Windows Vista” of our time. With that being said, I would like to also state that Safari and VoiceOver still provide the best user experience for mobile internet browsing for blind and sighted users alike. Safari and Google Chrome use the same web rendering engines, which are the standard in web technologies along with Mozilla’s Firefox

Consistency and Stability

The next topic discussed is uniformity and stability in iOS. As stated earlier, iOS 8 is probably one of the worst releases of iOS. Developers warned Apple of its problems before release, and it was released anyways. I will state that iOS 8.4 and iOS 9 address many issues with stability such as lag, and VoiceOver will say more prompts like, “Dock” as you enter that area of the home screen.

The Rotor

The author tries to get the reader to think of the rotor as a old rotary phone, and even rates that she puts it on the table and spins the phone while holding two fingers on the screen. As a partial VoiceOver user who has trained many other VoiceOver users, I find this interesting. The rotor is a very simple mechanic to VoiceOver. It takes some practice, but as long as you can put two fingers on the screen and turn those fingers clockwise or counter-clockwise, then your set. Think of the rotor as a radio dial or a knob that can be turned with just two fingers. It is also stated that there are huge gaps in the rotor options as the user turns the rotor to the next setting. This is easily explained. While in the VoiceOver settings section of the Settings app, you can change your items that appear in the rotor. If you add many items in the rotor, you will find that the items become closer together, and that you do not have to turn the rotor as far to get to the next item. You still have to turn the rotor a while to get to the item you want, but you will see that those, “blank spaces” are taken by other items.

Third Party Apps

The author states that third party apps may or may not be accessible. This is no different than actual websites with Safari. If the developer does not use standard practices in making the app, then it will not be accessible, and yes, this happens often. You will also find that apps may start accessible, and become inaccessible with VoiceOver during their lifetime.

Conclusion

While it is great that a person with full sight has decided to try using an iPhone with VoiceOver for work for forty days, I personally think that the author has put much of their opinion as a first time user of VoiceOver into this post. Many statements made in this post are contrary to what has been already stated by typical blind iOS users that use VoiceOver on a day to day basis.

The author concludes the post by saying that the phone offers the most advanced method for the blind to use a smartphone, but that it does not match up to how well a sighted person can use their phone. What do you think? As a blind person, do you think this is the case? We would like to know if you feel that you have the same ability to use an iPhone as a blind person as someone sighted besides the games and inaccessible apps of course. The author also fails to mention that this is also the case on the PC and Mac. There are all sorts of inaccessible apps and webpages there as well, so what makes the iPhone different?