Why UITableViewCell is not accessible (for VoiceOver)

Question

I'm not trying to solve any problem. Of course you can set isAccessibilityEnabled = true and it works. My question is: why is it turned off by default and there is no appropriate section in the interface builder. It seems for me like it's not recommended to make UITableViewCell subclasses accessible. Is there any better ways to make cells accessible? I mean to make a cell as one accessibility element which will contain all the info for VoiceOver.

Answer 1

why is it turned off by default

A UITableViewCell may be seen as a container inside which many elements are embedded (buttons...) and, as is, you can't have simultaneously a parent view (the table view cell) and its child views (label, button...) that are both accessible with VoiceOver: either your cell can be selected or its content.

By default, the content must be seen by VoiceOver: add two buttons in your cell and you'll see the difference by enabling/disabling the accessibility of the cell.

Is there any better ways to make cells accessible? I mean to make a cell as one accessibility element which will contain all the info for VoiceOver.

To reach your goal, the best way is to make your cell accessible while providing an accessibilityLabel and adding custom actions if many actions are planned in this cell (with buttons for instance).

Following this rationale improves the user experience: one unique selection with possible actions.

If you don't want the elements inside each cell to be read out, just define each one of your cells as follows:

override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, 
                        cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {

    let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "reuseIdentifier", 
                                             for: indexPath)

    cell.isAccessibilityElement = true
    cell.accessibilityLabel = "APPEND YOUR LABELS HERE"

    // Add everything you need to construct your cell here.

    return cell
}

That's the simplest configuration but you may decide to reach every elements in the cell and, in this case, it's quite different: see this answer or this one if you need some implementation examples for this.

Personnally, I always subclass the table view cell to define its trait, its array of accessiblity elements and its potential actions so as to control the way information are provided to the VoiceOver user: I find it very flexible even if it seems to be tedious at first sight. ;o)