Set the accessibility attributes on UIBarButtonItem

Question

I have several UIBarButtonItem objects in Interface Builder, and I cannot find any option to set the accessibility label or hint for these buttons.

How can I set these attributes?

Is there a way of doing this on a Storyboard in XCode 5? – fatuhoku Mar 10 '14 at 23:26 — fatuhoku, Mar 10 '14 at 23:26

score 28 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 11 '13 at 14:09

28

You can use the "User defined runtime attributes" and specify your accessibility information there:

answered Dec 11 '13 at 14:09

Rafael Nobre

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4

Quick correction, for the hint you should use `accessibilityHint`, not `keyPath` – Allison Nov 25 '17 at 06:54

score 24 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 06 '19 at 03:49

24

It is not actually enough to just set the accessibilityLabel User Defined Runtime Attribute in Interface Builder. You also have to set isAccessibilityElement to true. This keeps all of the accessibility information within Interface Builder.

edited Aug 06 '19 at 03:49

shim

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answered Jan 15 '15 at 16:26

Dan

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To match other element, the type should be Localized String. – OrangeDog Feb 17 '15 at 09:34
Can you translate accessibilityLabel set that way? – pronebird Aug 26 '15 at 06:58

score 15 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 27 '09 at 02:20

Okay, so it seems there's no way to do it in Interface Builder, even though you can set accessibility attributes on other UI elements using IB. So I set a tag on my toolbar and then added this code to my viewWillAppear method:

UIToolbar *bottombar = (UIToolbar*)[self viewWithTag:kBottomToolbar];

UIView *view = (UIView*)[bottombar.items objectAtIndex:0];
[view setAccessibilityLabel:NSLocalizedString(@"Add Bookmark", @"")];
[view setAccessibilityHint:NSLocalizedString(@"Add Bookmark", @"")];

and so on for each button item...

Not the most elegant, but it works.

As of iOS 5.0 you can directly set the `accessibilityLabel` property on a `UIBarButtonItem`. — rmaddy, Mar 11 '13 at 03:39

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 11 '13 at 03:38

I know this is old but I've just run into a need for this. As of iOS 5.0, you can now easily set the accessibility label of a UIBarButtonItem by doing:

UIBarButtonItem *btn = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] init...;
btn.accessibilityLabel = @"Label";

No more hacks.

score 4 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 06 '19 at 03:20

4

I got the code above to work with UIBarButtonItems with one extra line:

[view setIsAccessibilityElement:YES];

edited Aug 06 '19 at 03:20

shim

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answered May 01 '10 at 06:29

Lee Ann Rucker

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This resolved the issue. Keep in mind that if a parent view also has this set to YES, then the subviews are ignored. – Aaron Brager Mar 13 '13 at 19:11

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 24 '16 at 15:48

You can use IBInspectable for this so you get some handy options in Interface Builder's side panel.

public extension UIBarButtonItem {
  @IBInspectable var accessibilityEnabled: Bool {
    get {
      return isAccessibilityElement
    }
    set {
      isAccessibilityElement = newValue
    }
  }

  @IBInspectable var accessibilityLabelText: String? {
    get {
      return accessibilityLabel
    }
    set {
      accessibilityLabel = newValue
    }
  }
}

https://gist.github.com/KaneCheshire/dcce5246c3399072a5200189bfc53fe2

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 05 '10 at 22:41

Trying to set accessibility labels manually didn't work for me with UIBarButtonItem images. However, if I set the title manually then the label would work. But it displays the title below the image.

I ended up creating an UIButton and using it as a custom view for the UIBarButtonItem. The only loss being the image masking that UIBarButtonItem performs. Added bonus: accessibility configurable in IB.

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 09 '19 at 10:19

1

In Xcode 10.2, the Title field works well. Here, for example, my button is accessible as "Sort":

answered Apr 09 '19 at 10:19

Rudolf Adamkovič

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Set the accessibility attributes on UIBarButtonItem

8 Answers8