Tag: Accessibility

Okay, I get it, it's weekend before the show. But why would you drop your routine? Let's go through some great technical and one fun article.

• Let's follow the hype with some ChatGPT related topics from Michal Tynior – Pitfalls of the ChatGPT and Fine-tuning OpenAI models;
  
  
• Natascha Fadeeva provides review of CI/CD concept – Continuous integration and delivery for iOS;
  
  
• Network Path Monitoring by Keith Harrison provides modern way to monitor network availability;
  
  
• Marco Eidinger shares interesting hints on debugger usage – Skip code during debugging in Xcode;
  
  
• Mastering Swift Foundation Formatter API. Basics by Majid Jabrayilov refreshes knowledge on data formatting in Swift;
  
  
• Point-Free Pointers provide guidance on navigation in Composable Architecture – Navigation tools come to the Composable Architecture;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee explores code sharing between server and client code in Swift – Share Swift Code between Swift On Server Vapor and Client App;
  
  
• SwiftUI: Trailing label TextField by Magnus Jensen is great example of making nice task-focused UI control;
  
  
• Natalia Panferova gives hints using compositing groups in SwiftUI – Using compositing group for unifying shapes within buttons in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Tiago Gomes Pereira gives great overview of accessibility in SwiftUI – Preparing your App for Voice Over: Labels, Values and Hints;
  
  
• Amazing post on sophisticated debugging techniques by Bruno Rocha – Performance Trace Profiles in iOS: Debugging performance issues you can't reproduce.

And, as promised, fun one – refresh your Apple history knowledge with WWDC 2023: The Pregame Quiz by Jordan Morgan.

Get ready for WWDC23 – next week will be definitely packed with new stuff we'll be learning the whole summer!

Apple is celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day by announcing new accessibility features coming to its platforms later this year.

Assistive Access

Assistive Access is designed to help people with cognitive disabilities by simplifying app's interface to its essential features and removing cognitive load. This feature targets iPhone and iPad specifically.

It is not fully clear, if applications will be able to detect presence of Assistive Access mode and adjust their interface, however, at this point it seems to be reasonable to have similar option for complicated apps.

Live Speech and Personal Voice

Live Speech provides an option for people to type the text to have it spoken out loud during phone calls or live conversations. Frequently used phrases could be saved for quick access.

Users who are at risk of loosing their ability to speak could create Personalized Voice by reading phrases for 15 minutes. This voice could be used to read phrases via Live Speech.

Detection Mode in Magnifier

Magnifier now supports pointing to objects with finger to announce the object. Demo shows button text announcement on microwave oven. This feature significantly improves magnifier app for visually impaired people.

Several other features are added across Apple platforms that improve overall accessibility.

Apple Newsroom: Apple previews Live Speech, Personal Voice, and more new accessibility features

AppleVis published their annual Apple Vision Accessibility report.

Overall, platforms perform well on the report, however, macOS noticeably gets lower scores for VoiceOver and other accessibility features.

AppleVis: Apple Vision Accessibility: the AppleVis Report Card

Reference: 2022 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card

Spring is coming, and we're continuing our tradition of weekend reads. Let's see what we've got for this week.

• Matej Bukovinski goes through SDK development with Swift – Swift's Approach to SPI;
  
  
• Couple of great articles from David Smith – some trigonometry in Learning from my Mistakes, review of apps and tools for developers – Indispensable Tools and approach to accessibility – Accessibility: Try, then Listen;
  
  
• Automate debugging SwiftUI and UIKit with dataTile by Marin Todorov explains view debugging techniques with new dataTile tool;
  
  
• Sarun W. covers new approach to manage subscriptions – Allow users to manage In-App Subscription in SwiftUI;
  
  
• New passkeys are explained in Developer guide on passkeys for iOS by Natascha Fadeeva;
  
  
• John Sundell helps to distinguish views and view modifiers in SwiftUI – SwiftUI views versus modifiers;
  
  
• Interestingly, similar topic is covered in View Composition using ViewModifiers in SwiftUI by Antoine van der Lee;
  
  
• Improve code documentation with The visual reference guide for documenting your Swift code by Marco Eidinger;
  
  
• Good hint on error pattern matching by Ole Begemann – Pattern matching on error codes;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues series on charts in SwiftUI with accessibility – Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Accessibility.;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng dives into configurable widgets in How to Create Configurable Widgets With Dynamic Options?;
  
  
• Setting Up Different Environments in SwiftUI: Command Line Arguments and Build Configurations by Leonardo Maia Pugliese explains work with various build and execution options in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Michael Tsai comments on new way to wire outlets – NSViewController.ViewLoading.

And that is it for today. Have some rest and get back next week.

It's winter here in Bay Area today (it even snows somewhere here), so let's grab some warm beverage and get going.

• Let's start with some old articles on C++ interoperability – How to create a Swift Package from a C++ library and Getting started with Swift-C++ interop by Konstantin Semianov;
  
  
• And couple articles on how to make use of layout system in SwiftUI by the same author – Building a wrapping HStack with the SwiftUI Layout protocol and Building a hexagonal grid with the SwiftUI Layout protocol;
  
  
• Ricky Mondello shares security considerations on Twitter's 2FA changes – Twitter’s Decision to Limit SMS 2FA is Dangerous;
  
  
• Show chart annotations on hover in Swift Charts by Natalia Panferova covers adding interactions to charts;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues his series on charts – Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Legends.;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese provides guide on view mask usage in SwiftUI – Creating Animations with SwiftUI’s Mask View Modifier;
  
  
• The Composable Architecture best practices by Krzysztof Zabłocki – The Composable Architecture - Best Practices;
  
  
• Arbitrary SwiftUI Linear Gradient Rotation by David Smith goes through gradients in SwiftUI;
  
  
• And another take by him on how to use randomness in the apps – Finding Beauty in Randomness and Nature;
  
  
• Jordan Morgan covers important aspects of accessibility – Building For Voice Control;
  
  
• Speeding Up Scanner in Swift by Michael Tsai collects information on text parsing improvements in Swift;
  
  
• And couple of articles by Jesse Squires – How to find and fix premature view controller loading on iOS and Xcode tip: sharing breakpoints across projects.

Let's finish with interesting video on design process by David Smith.

https://youtu.be/BLEOBu2PaeA

And that is it for today. See you next week!

It's almost 2023. This good reads list come a little early, so you'll have time to celebrate New Year :)

• ChatGPT makes another appearance in our good reads – Static vs Dynamic Frameworks on iOS — a discussion with ChatGPT by Trevor Elkins and Max Topolsky;
  
  
• Improving your publication automation scripts – Authorizing App Store Connect API requests by Natascha Fadeeva;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov shares his review of 2022 – iOS development trends in review;
  
  
• Enum explained in-depth with code examples in Swift by Antoine van der Lee covers multiple enum use cases in Swift;
  
  
• RevenueCat shares upcoming updates for App Store receipt validation – App Store receipt signing certificate changes in 2023;
  
  
• Another great hint on accessibility in SwiftUI by Natalia Panferova – Image accessibility labels from Localizable.strings files;
  
  
• And an interesting article on macOS Gatekeeper – Gatekeeper’s Achilles heel: Unearthing a macOS vulnerability by Jonathan Bar Or.

We'd like to finish this issue with our Holiday Special podcast episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUWPqJHHfwg

Happy New Year!

Apple is widely known for making their devices accessible. All Apple platforms include settings to accommodate devices to users' needs.

New advertisement highlights these features and their impact on human lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sX9IEHWRJ8

Reference: Apple Highlights Accessibility Features on iPhone, Mac, and More in New Ad

Apple publishes beta 2 for iOS/iPadOS 16.2, macOS 13.1, watchOS 9.2 and tvOS 16.2. No corresponding Xcode version is published.

iOS 16.2 is to launch 5G in India, Medication Widget is added.

Also iOS 16.2 introduces Custom Accessibility Mode which guides user with accessibility settings in a streamlined manner. It is not yet known, if iOS 16.2 will actually ship this functionality.

Beta download: Operating Systems

Release notes:

• iOS & iPadOS 16.2 Beta 2 Release Notes
• macOS Ventura 13.1 Beta 2 Release Notes
• watchOS 9.2 Beta 2 Release Notes
• tvOS 16.2 Beta 2 Release Notes

References:

• iOS 16.2 beta 2 and more now rolling out to developers ahead of December launch
• Everything New in iOS 16.2 Beta 2: 5G in India, Medication Widget and More
• iOS 16.2 to introduce ‘Custom Accessibility Mode’ with streamlined experience for iPhone and iPad

Yes, iPhone 14 preorders are live! And you-know-what Ultra is already backordered for two months. So, let's read something good over the weekend.

• Rens Breur shares couple of great articles on SwiftUI internals – SwiftUI's diffing algorithm, The SwiftUI render loop and Don't use escaping closures in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese also writes on SwiftUI redraw investigations – Exploring SwiftUI Redraw Behavior with Instruments;
  
  
• Three UIKit Protips by Steve Landey explores great tips for almost forgotten framework;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues series on SwiftUI controls – Customizing toolbars in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Accessibility in SwiftUI explained for UIKit developers by Antoine van der Lee is a must read for every developer to bring apps to more people;
  
  
• Great guide on WidgetKit by Natascha Fadeeva – How to build a configurable widget with WidgetKit and SwiftUI;
  
  
• The SwiftUI Lab starts series of articles on SwiftUI Layout protocol – The SwiftUI Layout Protocol – Part 1;
  
  
• Getting Started with Swift Regex by Keith Harrison is a great piece on brand new regular expression framework;
  
  
• Sarun W. shared great articles on SwiftUI and specifically fonts – How to make SwiftUI button with buttonStyle expand to full width, How to use UIFont in SwiftUI Font and SF Font Expanded, Condensed, and Compressed: Three New font width styles in iOS 16.

And that is it for this wallet-endangering weekend. See you next week!

Some places will have longer weekend this time, so let's pack it with great reads!

• Leonardo Maia Pugliese publishes two articles – How to update or refresh Widget and Siri Intent programmatically in Swift for WatchOS? and comprehensive guide on architectural pattern – Memento Pattern with SwiftUI;
  
  
• Building widgets for iOS applications with WidgetKit and SwiftUI by Natascha Fadeeva covers widget development which would help your app make it to Lock Screen on iOS 16;
  
  
• Lock screen widgets in SwiftUI by Majid Jabrayilov continues Lock Screen widgets topic with more details;
  
  
• Great article by Antoine van der Lee on SwiftUI accessibility integrations – VoiceOver navigation improvement tips for SwiftUI apps;
  
  
• And if you're quite new to SwiftUI – SwiftUI View Modifiers Tutorial for iOS by Danijela Vrzan explores view modifiers;
  
  
• SwiftUI AnyLayout - smooth transitions between layout types by Sarun W. provides great overview of new addition to SwiftUI layout;
  
  
• Jordan Morgan touches important aspect of SwiftUI – testability – in Testing SwiftUI Bindings in Xcode Previews;
  
  
• And another great article by Leonardo Maia Pugliese – New MapKit Configurations with SwiftUI with MapKit integration improvements in upcoming releases.

That is all for this weekend! Enjoy the extra day, if applicable :)