Change order of read items with VoiceOver

Question

I have a bunch of buttons on the screen which are positioned intuitively visually but are not read in an intuitive order by VoiceOver. This is because certain buttons like U

Answer 1

This doesn’t directly answer the original question, but it answers the title of the question:

When I want VoiceOver to swipe down a column, I have been using a containing view for the column with shouldGroupAccessibilityChildren set.

I wish I had known this earlier, because it can be a pain to retroactively insert containers into an autolayout situation…

Answer 2

The easiest answer to this lies in creating a UIView subclass that contains your buttons, and responds differently to the accessibility calls from the system. These important calls are:

-(NSInteger)accessibilityElementCount
-(id)accessibilityElementAtIndex:
-(NSInteger)indexOfAccessibilityElement:

I've seen a few of these questions, and answered one before, but I've not seen a generic example of how to reorder the VoiceOver focus. So here is an example of how to create a UIView subclass that exposes its accessible subviews to VoiceOver by tag.

AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
@interface AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag : UIView
@end

AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag.m

#import "AccessibilityDirectional.h"
@implementation AccessibilitySubviewsOrderedByTag {
    NSMutableArray *_accessibilityElements;
}
    //Lazy loading accessor, avoids instantiating in initWithCoder, initWithFrame, or init.
-(NSMutableArray *)accessibilityElements{
    if (!_accessibilityElements){
        _accessibilityElements = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    }
    return _accessibilityElements;
}
// Required accessibility methods...
-(BOOL)isAccessibilityElement{
    return NO;
}
-(NSInteger)accessibilityElementCount{
    return [self accessibilityElements].count;
}
-(id)accessibilityElementAtIndex:(NSInteger)index{
    return [[self accessibilityElements] objectAtIndex:index];
}
-(NSInteger)indexOfAccessibilityElement:(id)element{
    return [[self accessibilityElements] indexOfObject:element];
}
// Handle added and removed subviews...
-(void)didAddSubview:(UIView *)subview{
    [super didAddSubview:subview];
    if ([subview isAccessibilityElement]){
        // if the new subview is an accessibility element add it to the array and then sort the array.
        NSMutableArray *accessibilityElements = [self accessibilityElements];
        [accessibilityElements addObject:subview];
        [accessibilityElements sortUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id obj1, id obj2){
            // Here we'll sort using the tag, but really any sort is possible.
            NSInteger one = [(UIView *)obj1 tag];
            NSInteger two = [(UIView *)obj2 tag];
            if (one < two) return NSOrderedAscending;
            if (one > two) return NSOrderedDescending;
            return NSOrderedSame;
        }];
    }
}
-(void)willRemoveSubview:(UIView *)subview{
    [super willRemoveSubview:subview];
    // Clean up the array. No check since removeObject: is a safe call.
    [[self accessibilityElements] removeObject:subview];
}
@end

Now simply enclose your buttons in an instance of this view, and set the tag property on your buttons to be essentially the focus order.