Writing Great iOS Accessibility Labels
A good accessibility label lets your customer know exactly what a control does in as few words as possible, without having to rely on implied context.
Don’t Add the Element Type
iOS already knows your button is a button and your image is an image, it does this using an accessibility trait. If you label your button as ‘Play button’ your VoiceOver customers will hear ‘Play button. Button.’
Keep it Succinct
Don’t frustrate your customer by adding too much information to your labels. There’s no need to describe photos in detail for example, just let people know what the subject of the photo is. Take another look at the Spotify example from the post on when to use accessibility labels. Here our customer knows they’re on the player screen for Beyoncé’s ‘Pray You Catch Me’, so none of the labels include the name of the track. The pause button doesn’t say ‘Pause Pray You Catch Me by Beyoncé’, but simply ‘pause’. Use a single word wherever you can.
Capitalise the First Character
This allows VoiceOver to read the label with the correct inflection.
