Accessibility for View Controllers Presented Via SwiftMessagesSegue

[patmalt]

SwiftMessagesSegue's messageView is a BaseView, and since BaseView does not conform to AccessibleMessage, presented view controllers will not be accessible via Accessibility Inspector or Voice Over.

I implemented a subclass of BaseView that does conform to AccessibleMessage, and set it to the messageView property of SwiftMessagesSegue. This should work in most cases...

Expect where the presented view controller is wrapped inside of a UINavigationController.

During the install phase of Presenter, the UINavigationController's rootViewController is not added to the messageView's view hierarchy yet, and the elements are also not exposed.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[wtmoose]

I’m not sure I’d use AccessibleMessage with view controllers at all due to their complexity. AccessibleMessage was meant to help improve voice over for simple views, such as reading the title + body out as a single unit. Was there a specific reason you wanted to use AccessibleMessage?

[patmalt]

Yes, so we can use Voice Over on view controllers we present with SwiftMessagesSegue. All we get now is the large "Dismiss" area

[wtmoose]

Hmm. I think ideally you’d get the view controller’s default voice over behavior. I’ll need to look into it.

[patmalt]

I do not believe this to be true

[dtashkandi]

@patmalt can you please share your subclass of BaseView?

[patmalt]

import SwiftMessages

class SwiftMessagesBottomSegue: SwiftMessagesSegue {
    init(source: UIViewController, destination: UIViewController) {
        super.init(identifier: nil, source: source, destination: destination)
        configure(layout: .bottomCard)
        self.messageView = MyNewBaseView(destination)
    }
}

class MyNewBaseView: BaseView, AccessibleMessage {
    var uiViewController: UIViewController?

    init(_ destination: UIViewController) {
        uiViewController = destination
        super.init(frame: destination.view.frame)
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

    var accessibilityMessage: String? = "My Bottom Sheet"
    open var additonalAccessibilityElements: [NSObject]? {
        var elements: [NSObject] = []
        func getAccessibleSubviews(view: UIView) {
            for subview in view.subviews {
                if subview.isAccessibilityElement {
                    elements.append(subview)
                } else {
                    getAccessibleSubviews(view: subview)
                }
            }
        }
        getAccessibleSubviews(view: self.backgroundView)
        return elements
    }
    var accessibilityElement: NSObject?
}

I believe I copied the accessibility code from another part of SwiftMessages

[dtashkandi]

@patmalt thanks!

[wtmoose]

@patmalt @dtashkandi I pushed a fix for this to the head of master if you want to try it out and let me know.

Previously, if a view that didn't adopt AccessibleMessage was ignored by Voice Over. With meh fix, these views are not ignored by Voice Over and are responsible for their own accessibility. I think this is the ideal behavior for view controllers. I don't recommend putting view controllers behind the AccessibleMessage protocol, but you can do that if you want to (as you've done above).

[patmalt]

This fix worked for me! Thanks. I think we can consider this issue closed.

[wtmoose]

Great. Will close when I release the change.

[wtmoose]

Included in 8.0.0 release