Open Radar

 
Summary:
If you propare your app to make full use of VoiceOver's accessibility features you are often stuck by a rather annoying thing:

VoiceOver picks after e.g. a new pushed ViewController in an UINavigationController as the first element everytime the TOP-LEFT element which is often the leftBarButtonItem.

Not always is his the best choice for perfect UXP. Especially on modal viewcontrollers it would be a great help to give developers control over following things to improve the overall UXP in VoiceOver:

- Pick the element which will be selected by VoiceOver as the FIRST spoken element
- Give some hints on the order of elements (e.g using some additional accessibilityOrderId's)
- Allow developers to present or override the first spoken message and do NOT force speaking of the first element at all immediately, because often a custom message can improve the UXP significantly and the ALWAYS spoken first element label conflicts with other accessibility messages which are better suited

Steps to Reproduce:
1. try to customize accessibility beyond just automatically spoken labels & hints

2. see that you have nearly no control on order, timing and choice of startelements


Expected Results:
I expect to have control over:
1. Determination of the default first element to be spoken
2. Control over the timing & occurrence WHEN first message is spoken if AT ALL
3. A way to give VoiceOver some hints like an accessibilityElementOrderId to optimize swipe-flow of elements

Actual Results:
None of the above is possible at the moment which leads to following problems:

1. Spoken first messages often interrupt the workwflow and are wrong for the context
2. Timing of first spoken message often interferes with custom defined messages and is NOT overridable/replaceable


Version:
iOS 6.1.3