How to mimic UITableView's UITableViewStylePlain section header style

Question

My application uses abbreviations in UITableView section header titles that are hard for VoiceOver to pronounce. As I need to make these titles pronounceable by

Answer 1

I found that the other answers either don't work or don't mimic the standard look. Here's mine, which works for iOS 5 and 6.

Note that if you're on iOS 6, you should use dequeueReusableHeaderFooterViewWithIdentifier, which makes things much easier and cleaner.

- (UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView viewForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    if ([tableView respondsToSelector:@selector(dequeueReusableHeaderFooterViewWithIdentifier:)]) 
    {
        static NSString *headerReuseIdentifier = @"TableViewSectionHeaderViewIdentifier";
        UITableViewHeaderFooterView *sectionHeaderView = [tableView dequeueReusableHeaderFooterViewWithIdentifier:headerReuseIdentifier];
        if(sectionHeaderView == nil){
            sectionHeaderView = [[UITableViewHeaderFooterView alloc] initWithReuseIdentifier:headerReuseIdentifier];
        }

        //customise the label here:
        //[sectionHeaderView.textLabel setTextColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];

        return sectionHeaderView;
    }
    else 
    {            
        UIView* headerView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, 44.0)];

        UILabel *headerLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(20.0, 10, 290, 0)];
        headerLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
        headerLabel.text = [self tableView:tableView titleForHeaderInSection:section];
        headerLabel.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:17];
        headerLabel.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentLeft;
        headerLabel.shadowColor = [UIColor clearColor];
        headerLabel.numberOfLines = 0;
        [headerLabel sizeToFit];
        [headerView setFrame:CGRectMake(headerView.frame.origin.x, headerView.frame.origin.y, headerView.frame.size.width, headerLabel.bounds.size.height)];

        //some customisation:
        headerLabel.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];

        [headerView addSubview: headerLabel];

        return headerView;
    }
}

As the docs say, if you implement viewForHeaderInSection you must also implement heightForHeaderInSection. Implement it like this to make sure that it gets the right size for any number of lines:

-(float)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    return UITableViewAutomaticDimension;
}