I think that developers can underestimate how awesome UIAccessibility is. The iPhone has amazing potential as an accessibility tool, and it’s used by a majority of visually impaired smartphone users. Well-designed apps really can offer meaningful improvements in peoples’ everyday lives. But mobile isn’t like other platforms where users can hack together scripts to improve the accessibility of poorly designed apps. It’s up to the application developer to provide adequate support for all users, and it’s unfortunately common to see apps where VoiceOver interaction is broken.

Apple has made UIAccessibility pretty easy to support, but it does take some intentional effort and an understanding of the tools and usage patterns. In this talk, my goal is to give you basic familiarity with the accessibility tools as a user uses them, basic familiarity with the UIAccessibility API, some UX intuition for users with visual impairments, and some simple helpers and tools to make implementation easier.