Designing for visionOS & Accessibility

Demo: VoiceOver

Learn how to turn VoiceOver on and off and some basic VoiceOver gestures.

Setting Up VoiceOver Shortcut

On your device, open Settings ▸ Accessibility ▸ Accessibility Shortcut, and select VoiceOver.

This enables you to switch VoiceOver on and off by triple-clicking the device’s side button.

I check more than one shortcut option to avoid accidentally turning on VoiceOver when I’m trying to use Apple Pay.

You could turn on Settings ▸ Accessibility ▸ Touch ▸ Back Tap and set Double-tap or Triple Tap to VoiceOver.

Or just ask Siri to turn VoiceOver on or off.

Using VoiceOver on an iOS Device

After setting up your shortcut(s), go back to Settings ▸ Accessibility,

Scroll down, then use a shortcut to start VoiceOver.

VoiceOver says it’s on, then says “Settings”. Tap the screen to get out of the navigation bar, then swipe down with three fingers to scroll to the top of the list.

If your screen locks on an iPhone with Face ID:

Wake iPhone and glance at it, then drag up from the bottom edge of the screen until you feel a vibration or hear two rising tones.

Now, practice some basic navigation in VoiceOver.

First, swipe right until you reach VoiceOver.

Double-tap anywhere to activate this item.

A split-tap gesture is another way to activate an item: Touch and hold Speech with one finger, then tap the screen with another.

The Detect Languages option is very useful, so turn it on.

Tap the description to hear: VoiceOver will switch voices when text in another language is detected.

Next, with two fingers, do a Z gesture.

This takes you back to the previous screen.

Now, activate Verbosity:

VoiceOver users can customize what VoiceOver reads out. These are my settings:

If your device’s settings are different, your VoiceOver might say slightly different things. It’s OK to turn off VoiceOver while you select your Verbosity settings. :]

Now, still in Settings, turn on VoiceOver for one last exercise:

What’s the VoiceOver gesture to get out of Settings?

To get back to the home screen, drag up from the bottom edge of the screen until you feel a vibration or hear two rising tones.

If you hear three rising tones, you get the app switcher.

Open another app, and find out what VoiceOver says:

In an Apple app, it should all make sense and give you enough information to use the app without looking at the screen. But in some apps, what you hear might not be so useful. What can you do to make sure VoiceOver reads out useful information for your own apps? The next part of this lesson gets you started.