VoiceOver accessibility focus on a series of elements - ios

Say I have a dialog box like this:
and I want to focus on title, then body and then each button one after another. I am able to focus on body using
UIAccessibilityPostNotification(UIAccessibilityScreenChangedNotification, dialog.bodyLabel);
but is there any way to define a set of elements we want to focus instead of a single one?
EDIT:
I have also tried to make a list of elements I want to focus on using this syntax:
dialog.accessibilityElements = #[dialog.titleLable, dialog.bodyLable, etc];
but it just reads the first element (in this case dialog.titleLable) and doesn't move to the next one. Any thoughts?

The default value is set to NO for all the elements.
set the isAccessibleElement to YES for the all individual elements in the dialog
and then you can do
dialog.accessibilityElements = #[dialog.titleLable, dialog.bodyLable];
so that voice over reads title label first and body label next.

Related

Accessibility: focus on a view

In my application (that has to be accessible for blind user) I have this scenario (its a grammatic exercise)
When I try it on a device turning on VoiceOver, first it focus on the first part of the sentence, so in that case it read "Kesha" and when i swipe right to read the next part it read the second part of the sentence "the contract because...". What I want is to make it also focus on the gray box (that is a UIViewelement) before it read the second part of the sentence, so that the user know where that empty box is in the sentence, but i don't know how to do that.
I alread tried grayBox.accessibilityLabel = "empty box" or grayBox.accessibilityHint = "empty box" but it just don't set the focus on that view and it doesn't speak. I also tried to put an empty UILabel inside the box but I have some issue positioning that in the right order and I don't think it is the right way to do it. Any suggestion?
On the UIView that you want to 'receive focus' you just need to enable accessibility or mark it as an accessible element, An example:
myGreyView.isAccessibilityElement = true
myGreyView.accessibilityLabel = "A grey box"
myGreyView.accessibilityHint = "this is a secretive box. I don't know what it does"
You can also tick a box in the UIView's properties in xcode interface builder "Accessibility Enabled" I think its called. Which also lets you set the label and hint.
For more information see this Apple guide to VoiceOver
In regards to the order of elements being read out. Is the first part and second part different UILabels or one label?
Are you adding these in code or Xib/Storyboard? Depending on the order they are added as subviews can effect the order VoiceOver reads items out.
When adding the 3x UI elements add them in this order below.
UILabel - "Kesha"
UIView - Gray box, "A grey box"
UILabel - "the contract because it was not fair."
If you have added them via Interface builder (Xib/Storyboard) make sure the order is correct in the view hierarchy.
If this fails you could try overriding the method "accessibilityElements" and return an array of the labels and grey view in the order you want them read out.

VoiceOver : is 'accessibilityActivationPoint' really useful?

I tried and understood what could be the purpose of the accessibilityActivationPoint but in vain.
When a focused accessible element is activated, that property should indicate VoiceOver the specific area it's going to activate when a user double-taps the element (Apple reference) : for me, it's always the selected element itself.
I understood the selected element is considered as a block by VoiceOver, whatever the other elements inside. Once a double tap occurs to activate this block, VoiceOver calls accessibilityActivate to know what to perform (Apple reference).
1/. I've written many tests by creating a custom view including a switch control. Whatever the value of accessibilityActivationPoint inside (or outside on another switch control), the value of the switch control never changes. Is it a proper use case or am I totally wrong ?
2/. When we gather many elements inside one accessible element, how is VoiceOver able to activate one of them while they aren't accessible by definition ? Pointing one of them thanks to the accessibilityActivationPoint should work ?
Personally, I couldn't make it work and think that I'm really confusing accessibilityActivationPoint and accessibilityActivate.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.
Yes, you have the right idea with accessibilityActivate and accessibilityActivationPoint. Note that, in order for it to work, the accessibilityActivationPoint needs to be a point within the Control that you are trying to activate in on-screen coordinates (use the convert function!).
I think the short answer is "yes" to answer your second question, but, just to clear up confusion about when Accessibility Activation Point is useful, I'll go into more detail about it.
By default (aka, the default behavior for AcessibilityActivate()), when any view is activated by VoiceOver, VoiceOver will send a "tap gesture" to the center of the view. The position of this "tap gesture" can be changed by updating the accessibilityActivationPoint attribute on a view. Below, I have an example for how this property can be used.
Let's say you have a blank button (in the image below, the button is the gray box) next to some text:
For the purpose of accessibility, you may want to make the entire view that holds the button and text an Accessibility Element (so that VoiceOver users can easily understand that the button is associated with the text "Worldspace Attest"). In the image below, I am using Accessibility Inspector to show that the view holding both of these elements is an Accessibility Element.
Notice in these images that the button is not in the center of the view, but rather, it is to the right. When you activate this view using VoiceOver, the view will not select the button; instead, it will send a "tap" to the center of the view (which is the same as tapping the text, which does not do anything). In order to select the button, you have to set the view's accessibilityActivationPoint to be the on-screen coordinates of the button:
view.accessibilityActivationPoint = self.convert(button.center, to: UIApplication.shared.windows.first)
This should make it so that this button is usable by a VoiceOver user.
I hope this information clears up any confusion about the Accessibility Activation Point property. The example I used above can be found in this repository in the "Active Control Name" demo.

Write text in OpenLayers3

I need to write some text in openLayers 3... Not a label, something like a text object, that I can select and drag around the map. This text must have multiple lines.
I tried to use a point with ol.style.text, but it isn't multiline.
I also tried the popups, but I need the text to be always displayed.
Is there any way to use a text feature for this (ol.format.TextFeature)?
Is there any object that I can use for that purpose?
Thanks!!
You can use an ol.Overlay for that. An overlay is basically anything an Element can be. It has a position an positioning that can be set at any time.
See an example: http://openlayers.org/en/v3.9.0/examples/overlay.html?q=overlay
You could use map browser events (pointerdown, pointerup) and if the target is your overlay element then you could move it around and update its position.

Add a Text Link to a TextView

Is it possible to add a text link into a TextView? I want the link to perhaps behave like a button, where I can assign an action to it.
EDIT: When I say assign an action, I mean actually giving it something in the code. I'm wondering if it's possible to dynamically add a "button" into text that I can assign a coded action to.
Live scenario
Think of something like a dictionary app. Maybe the definition of one word uses another word that you might not know the definition of, so being able to click on that word to instantly search it rather than having to type it in would be a nice user friendly feature. It seems rather unlikely, though, I guess.
I would recommend using NIAttributedLabel from Nimbus, an open source iOS library. You can specify text ranges that are links, and you get delegate messages sent when a user taps on it.
Main Nimbus site: http://nimbuskit.info/
NIAttributedLabel docs: http://docs.nimbuskit.info/interface_n_i_attributed_label.html
in the inspector, go to the Text View Attributes tab then make sure "Detect Links" is checked.
Yes you can. Add the URL into the text view, then open up the Attributes Inspector. You will see an option in there to detect links.
I know of a way, but its a LOT of work. First, you have an NSAttributedString that you have the text view display. Second, attribute the range of text you want to be the button. Third, assign a tap gesture recognizer to the text view and in the method called by the recognizer, you'll use core text to determine if the tap happened over the range of text that represents the buttons.
Heres how youll use core text: create a framesetter with the attributed string. Create a frame from the framsetter with the shape of a square that is the frame of the text view, inset by the padding of the text view. The frame will allow you to get the y origins of every line in the text view and and once you know what line the tap happened on, you can use the line to then figure out exactly what character was tapped on that line by giving it an x offset. Once you know character index on the line, you can add it to the beginning of the range of the line and get the index of the character within the whole string. Then you can check if its within the range of the text that is your button. If it is, you can then call a method to simulate a target action type behavior.
Ive explained the process of how to accomplish this and specified what kinds of core text objects youll need, ill let you look up the specific api details:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Carbon/Reference/CoreText_Framework_Ref/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40005304
You can also use my objc core text wrapper:
https://github.com/mysterioustrousers/MYSCoreText
What about CoreText? It Can draw many kinds of Text .

Is it possible to control the size of a TAB character in a Flash/Flex TextField?

I figured out how to get a TextField to maintain focus when the tab key is pressed (using an event listener on FocusEvent.KEY_FOCUS_CHANGE), but what I'd like to do is control the size of the tab character in the TextField so that it is equal to five spaces. (I would just insert five spaces when the tab key is pressed, however due to requirements this is not an option.) Is this possible?
As you can see the TextFormat class have an indent property :
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0_fr/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/text/TextFormat.html#indent
You can modify the value of the indent in your event handler.
Can you copy/paste the code you're using? Which version of AS do you use?

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