How to Detect if Assistive Access is turned on in iOS 17

Question

Is there a way to programmatically determine the status of Accessibility Assistive Access on iOS 17? I want to be able to adjust the app's behavior or interface based on whether these accessibility features are enabled or not.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

You shouldn't have to query it. You have to design your app so that it will work properly when Assistive Access is turned on. Check out this Apple video from WWDC23 about this feature - https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10032/

At 5:25 it talks about how to adjust your app to work with Assistive Access. You need to add UISupportsFullscreenInAssistiveAccess to your info.plist and then it refers to various properties you can set to adjust the layout of your app.

This is still a very new feature so there aren't many resources outside of Apple that help.

The video refers to a few other resources from WWDC in 2022 and 2018

• WWDC22 - Composing Custom Layouts with Swiftui

  • https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/composing_custom_layouts_with_swiftui
  • https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10056/ (video)

• WWDC18 - UIKit: Apps for Every Size and Shape

  • https://nilotic.github.io/2018/09/19/UIKit-Apps-for-Every-Size-and-Shape.html
  • https://www.wwdcnotes.com/notes/wwdc18/235/ (notes)
  • https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2018/235gkyrtsva0gy/235/235_uikit_apps_for_every_size_and_shape.pdf (pdf)