Re: Presenting a modal view on iOS, and accessibility
Re: Presenting a modal view on iOS, and accessibility
- Subject: Re: Presenting a modal view on iOS, and accessibility
- From: Jonathan del Strother <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 19:13:04 +0100
On 11 May 2011 16:50, Travis Siegel <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> On May 11, 2011, at 5:28 AM, Jonathan del Strother wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> My app presents a custom modal view as a popup menu with a list of
>> actions. While this popup is visible, the rest of the screen is
>> dimmed. It's somewhat similar to UIAlertView, with the addition of
>> being able to tap outside of the popup to dismiss it and returns the
>> screen to normal.
>>
>> I'm struggling to make this accessible. By default, swiping right to
>> jump to the next item on the page is scrolling through every single
>> accessible element on the screen (a long table view) before reaching
>> the popup menu buttons. When the user activates the popup menu, it
>> would be great if I could make the voiceover focus jump to the first
>> button in the menu, but it seems like that isn't possible. I've also
>> tried temporarily marking everything else on the screen as
>> isAccessibilityElement=NO, to prevent it gaining voiceover focus, but
>> it seems like certain elements (UITableView rows and
>> UINavigationController bar buttons) are always capable of getting
>> focussed.
>
> This is as it should be. I am a vo user, and if I was unable to get out of
> your app because it blocked everything else on the screen, and made it
> impossible for me to select another program, or do something else I am
> working on would cause me to dump your app in the trash real quick, and
> advise other vo users to do the same.
> You really need to think about what you're trying to accomplish, just like
> on osx, I try to convince developers it's a bad idea to hijack vo and tell
> it to do something the user doesn't want, and this is equally (if not more)
> true of ios apps. Any program that tries to control what I can and cannot
> do on my device as a result of forcing vo compliance (which is not something
> most developers would dream of for sighted users) doesn't strike me as a
> useful way to encourage vo users to use the application. Vo is simply a
> replacement for the screen, not a control method. In this case, I
> understand what you're asking, and it probably makes sense, but please keep
> in mind that vo users are just as likely to be doing something else as they
> are to be looking at your app, and forcing them into a particular spot on
> the screen, or to select a particular item they didn't want is generally not
> the way to code the app. Everything should be voluntary, and not
> compulsary. Too many developers forget this, and try to make vo do things
> for them. It's nice that developers want to support vo, and I'm in no way
> discouraging this, in fact, I wholeheartedly support this, but developers
> must think about how it affects the end-users. If you wouldn't want an app
> to yank you out of your work and force you to do something, then by all
> means, don't do that to the vo users either.
> Again, in this case, it sounds like a reasonable thing to do, since you
> want them to select something from a list, but locking out the rest of the
> screen probably isn't necessary, if a vo user needs to select a menu option,
> give us enough credit to expect we'll do that and then return to the app
> afterwords as normal, there's no reason to envoke hand holding to prevent
> access to the rest of the system.
> For you, it may make sense to block everything but your pop-up, but a vo
> user expects things to be there on screen, and if it's all missing, you may
> get questions as to why your app doesn't work properly, even though it's
> working by design to do what it is doing.
> Just some thoughts from an ipod touch 4g user.
>
>
>
In principle I agree with you, but right now it's a horrible
experience where a VO user has no idea that a new menu has appeared,
and has to flick through all the other items on the page (it's a table
view, so it's a fairly long page) before they reach the menu buttons
that have popped up. I'm not sure how to fix that without temporarily
preventing access to the other items.
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