Does anyone know of a way to have a single value for an accessibility label span across multiple elements? I have two labels that form a single title line and the screen reader reads them separately. I have tried selecting both and applying the setting and it doesn't work.
EDIT:
Here is a view of my storyboard...
However, when the screen readers reaches this point, it reads the first label (not using the accessibility value) and then the second label.
We can group elements using UIAccessibilityElement class and provide a combined frame of the elements you want to group using accessibilityFrameInContainerSpace property.
//From Apple Docs
let profileElement = UIAccessibilityElement(accessibilityContainer: headerView)
profileElement.accessibilityLabel = profileNameLabel.text
profileElement.accessibilityValue = openPostsLabel.text
profileElement.accessibilityTraits |= UIAccessibilityTraitButton // Tells VoiceOver to treat our new view like a button
let combinedLabelFrame = profileNameLabel.frame.union(openPostsLabel.frame)
let profileElementFrame = combinedLabelFrame.union(profileImageView.frame) //providing union of frames.
// This tells VoiceOver where the element is on screen so a user can find it as they touch around for elements
profileElement.accessibilityFrameInContainerSpace = profileElementFrame
Check apple docs Whats new in accessibility.
Link for sample app explaining how to do it.
I had two labels in a UIStackView - so I disabled the accessibility on the actual labels and then enabled accessibility for the stack view. In Xcode 10, UIStackView does not have an "Accessibility" section in Interface Builder, so what I did is add two custom attributes under Identity Inspector > User Defined Runtime Attributes. I added a Bool named isAccessibilityElement set to true and a String named accessibilityLabel set to my desired text. Of course if you want this to update programatically, you can create an IBOutlet to the UIStackView and set the values in code.
I ended up solving this issue...
I set the label value of the first element to "Transfection Search" and cleared and disabled the accessibility settings on the second. This way, the screen reader reads the first items value and completely skips the second.
It still only highlights the first element, but I don't think there is a way to group elements and apply accessibility attributes to all.
